Podcasts about Ruth Rendell

What a delight to talk to laura thompson about Agatha Christie. Above all, this episode was fun. Laura really does know more than anyone about Agatha and we covered a lot. What did Agatha Christie read? What did she love about Shakespeare? Was she pro-hanging? Why so much more Poirot than Marple? Why was she so productive during the war? We also talked Wagner, modern art, the other Golden Age writers, nursery rhymes, TV adaptations, poshness, nostalgia, Mary Westmacott, and plenty more. TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to the very splendid Laura Thompson. All of you will know Laura's Substack. She has also written books about the Mitfords, heiresses, Lord Lucan, many other subjects, and most importantly today, Agatha Christie, who died 50 years ago. And there's a new book coming from Laura about Agatha Christie's 1926 disappearance.Laura, welcome.LAURA THOMPSON: So lovely to be here, Henry. I'm such a fan of your Substack, as you know.OLIVER: Well, same. Same. This is a mutual admiration call.THOMPSON: Well, thank you. Well, that's what we like.Christie's Favorite WritersOLIVER: Now tell me, what did Agatha Christie like to read?THOMPSON: Oh, a lot the same as us. I discovered she was a huge fan of Elizabeth Bowen, as we are. And Nancy Mitford, Muriel Spark. But her big love really was Dickens. She absolutely adored Dickens. I mean, she grew up in a house full of books, you know, and she wrote a screenplay of Bleak House for which she was handsomely paid. And it was never—I know, don't you long to know what that was like? Can you imagine—OLIVER: We've lost it? We don't have the typescript?THOMPSON: I've never seen it. I mean, maybe—I don't know whether it exists somewhere. But I just wonder how she tackled it, what she did. But yes, so that happened. And of course, Shakespeare, as we know from her books, which are full of subliminal and—I mean, you kind of notice them, but you don't have to.OLIVER: Yes. There's Shakespeare in every book?THOMPSON: No, but it's there, particularly Macbeth, which I suppose figures.OLIVER: Yeah.THOMPSON: Like The Pale Horse is completely Macbeth themed. And when I was a kid reading them, I think she really—Tennyson she uses a lot—she affected my reading in a good way.OLIVER: She sent you back to Shakespeare and the poets?THOMPSON: Well, sent me to them as a kid, probably. And also, there's a lot of Bible in her books, as I'm sure you've noticed.OLIVER: Yes. Yes.THOMPSON: Very easy facility with quoting the Bible.Christie and ShakespeareOLIVER: Now, what did she learn from Shakespeare? Because she clearly knows the plays in detail. She sees them a lot. She reads them. She and he are, I think, quite good plotters.THOMPSON: Is she even better than he is?OLIVER: Well, let's not get into that. But there is a sort of, in a funny way, a kind of affinity between them as writers.THOMPSON: That's so interesting.OLIVER: What do you think she learned from him?THOMPSON: Tell me how you—how you see that.OLIVER: Well, do you know that Margaret Rutherford adaptation, which probably you don't like and I do—THOMPSON: Go on.OLIVER: It's called Murder Most Foul, isn't it?THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And there's something about the way that they can both walk the line between the sort of dark and deadly and the histrionic. Margaret Rutherford can't walk that line, but Agatha Christie can, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting.OLIVER: And Miss Marple could come onstage in a couple of the plays. She's not so far off from being a Queen Margaret or some—in her angry moments maybe, do you think?THOMPSON: More rational, maybe.OLIVER: Much more rational.THOMPSON: Not so mad. Well, she's not mad, Margaret, is she? But she's upset.OLIVER: She starts off as a much sort of nastier character—Murder at the Vicarage, right?THOMPSON: Yes, she does. She was more acidic and then gradually—OLIVER: Waspish.THOMPSON: Waspish, and sort of mellowed. I see what you mean. And almost in the way that she calls herself—although that's obviously not Shakespeare—calls herself Nemesis.OLIVER: And the sense of atmosphere.THOMPSON: Yes, and the way they're structured. That's not necessarily just true of Shakespeare, but there is this sort of act three entanglement and this beautiful act five resolution that goes on with a soliloquy, I suppose.OLIVER: And some people think they both get confused in act four, but that's obviously not true, that this is the real mess of the plot. I think she might have learned quite a lot from Shakespeare, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting. But, you know, the way she writes about Shakespeare in her letters to her second husband, Max, because when she was living in London during the war and almost at her most productive—I mean, her productivity levels are insane. And hitting every ball for six, really, you know: Towards Zero, Five Little Pigs, a couple of Westmacotts, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But she spent a lot of time going on her own to see Shakespeare.She's very—I hope I'm right in saying this—she's very sort of Ernest Jones [CB1] in her approach. She doesn't regard them so much as the products of words on a page; she regards them as rounded characters. Why were Goneril and Regan the way they were? What's wrong with Ophelia? You feel like saying, “Well, whatever Shakespeare wanted it to be,” but she sees them in that way. And Iago particularly—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —is the one that gets her. Yes. In one of her, I better not say which, but a major, major novel.And the book that she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree, which I think might well be her best book of all. I think—well, I'll just say she wrote these six books under a pseudonym, Mary Westmacott. People call them romantic novels; that's sort of the last thing they are. And they're very, very interesting mid-20th-century human condition novels, and they're full of lots of stuff that she had to distill for the detective fiction. And she talks a lot about Iago in The Rose and the Yew Tree really interestingly, I think.Christie on Shakespeare?OLIVER: Now, Max said she should just write a book about Shakespeare, all this Shakespeare all the time. But she didn't. Why?THOMPSON: No. I don't think she ever liked being told what to do.OLIVER: [laughs]THOMPSON: His letters to her are quite annoying, aren't they?OLIVER: Yes, yes. I've only read what's in your book, but yes, I didn't warm to him.THOMPSON: I'm glad because people do. He gets a really good press even though he was unfaithful. But it worked, the marriage, because they both got what they wanted from it. But he said that, yes, and she says, “Oh no, they're just thoughts for you.” I don't think she would've felt the need, somehow. I think she liked saying things in her own more oblique way.OLIVER: Save it for the novels.THOMPSON: Yes, she's a great mistress of the indirect, I think, really. The way she writes about Macbeth in The Pale Horse, which I think is a really underrated novel, including thoughts on how it should be staged, which are really interesting and very, very good. I think she would've preferred to do that and use it to her ends.And of course, she has an incredibly powerful sense of evil, which I suppose is also in Shakespeare. Hers is a Christian sensibility, I mean, no question. People never talk about that, but it really is.OLIVER: Was she pro hanging?THOMPSON: Well, I think she took a kind of utilitarian approach that the innocent must be protected. And she took a view that if you've killed once, it becomes very easy to kill again because something in you has shifted, so you become a danger to the community. So I suppose in that sense she was.I mean, Miss Marple was. She's quite—“I really feel quite glad to think of him being hanged.”OLIVER: It's one of her most striking lines.THOMPSON: It is, isn't it?OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: So I suppose she was. I mean, I suppose she was. You know, she's very modern, she's very subtle in her thinking, but at the same time, she is a late Victorian product of her society. Yes.Dickens and Christie's FamilyOLIVER: Now, you mentioned this Bleak House script. She loved Bleak House. Do we know what she loved about it? It's obviously the first detective novel. Are there other factors?THOMPSON: You are going to know—this is when I'm going to start coming across as an idiot. Is it written before The Moonstone? Yes, of course it is.OLIVER: I think so. Yes. Yes. It's the first time there's a police detective in a major English novel.THOMPSON: Okay. I think she—do you know, this is a really good question. I don't actually know why she loved Dickens so much. She grew up—she had that rather intriguing upbringing whereby she had two much older siblings, a sister who was 11 years older, a brother who was 10 years older. Father died when she was 11.So she grew up incredibly close with a really rather intriguing mother, Clara. This is in the house at Torquay. And her mother encouraged her in a way that, it seems to me, quite unusual for the time and for the class to which she belonged. Because it was never deemed that it would interfere with her marrying and leading a more conventional life. But she always wanted to express herself creatively. And I think her mother possibly was a frustrated creative. I don't know. She had a lot of go in her.And whether it was just something she read with—I think anything she did at an early age with her mother would've made a huge impression on her. I think what you read when you're that age, you never quite—I never read Dickens at that age, so I've never quite got the habit.OLIVER: But if she's born in 1890, presumably her mother is just about old enough to have been alive when Dickens was alive. And so she's got a somewhat direct—THOMPSON: Yes, she was.OLIVER: You know, it's sort of back to the original culture of it, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes. Isn't that extraordinary?OLIVER: Yes. Yes. It's crazy to think. So she must have taken it in maybe in a more original way, somehow?THOMPSON: Possibly. Certainly Tennyson, I get that feeling, because her mother wrote this rather leaden sub-Tennysonian poetry. [laughter] It's like Tennyson on the worst day he ever had, but worse than that.OLIVER: But worse, yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And she wrote poetry like that, the mother, which is really rather sweet and touching to read. And obviously she would've been alive at the same time as Tennyson. So, yes, I'd never, ever thought of that before. Isn't that extraordinary? I mean, they went to see Henry Irving.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And yet she feels—it just amazes me, this—so I'm leaping slightly here, but this 21st-century halo of cool that she has around her, Agatha Christie. [laughter] I know, it's awful in a way, but the way she can be reinterpreted—that is a bit Shakespearean, in a way.I don't mean to make extravagant claims, but there's a sort of translucent quality to what she writes that means that people can impose and pull it and twang it and know that she won't let them down, as we are seeing constantly at the moment.Art and MusicOLIVER: Yes. No, I agree. Other arts—we know about all this, she loves reading. What music did she enjoy, for example? Did she like paintings?THOMPSON: Yes, she loved paintings. She liked modern art. She was painted by Kokoschka. It's very good. And she writes about modern art. In Five Little Pigs, the painter in that is a modern artist.And then music was her grand passion. I mean, music was her original career choice, as you know, of course. She must have had a good voice. She thought she could make a career of it. And she could play the piano. Beautiful piano at Greenway, it's still there.And they used to do this thing—I think it's a lovely idea—as a family. They would fill in what they called the book of confessions, and it would be questions like, “What is your state of mind? If not yourself, who would you be?” And at the age of 63, which is the last time she filled it in, she wrote, “An opera singer.” So that was still what she would've dreamed of doing. She loved Wagner very, very deeply.OLIVER: Okay. Interesting.THOMPSON: And there's a Wagner theme in a very late book, Passenger to Frankfurt, the one that everybody hates except me. And music, I mean, as a girl when—so her voice wasn't strong enough for opera. I think her ultimate—same as I grew up wanting to be a ballet dancer, I think her ultimate would've been to sing Isolde at Covent Garden.And in some of her short stories and in her first Mary Westmacott, which is called Giant's Bread, which is about a musician—and she really inhabits this character, Vernon, and it's all about modern music. And somebody who knew about this stuff, which I don't, told me, “No, she knew. She knew what was going on. She knew about the trends.” This is in the late twenties.And she always went to Beirut, and that was her real, real, real passion. She was one of those restlessly creative people. And her mother, God bless her, encouraged it.Christie's UniquenessOLIVER: What is it that distinguishes her from the other detective fiction writers? Because she doesn't, to me, feel—she's obviously part of this whole generation, this whole golden age, whatever you want to call it, but she doesn't feel the same as them somehow.THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: What is that?THOMPSON: Do you think it's her simplicity, that distilled simplicity that she has? She doesn't write linear; she writes geometric, I always think.OLIVER: Tell me what you mean.THOMPSON: Well, if you think of a book, the one I admire the most, as I constantly go on about, which is Five Little Pigs—you think about the amount of stuff that's in that book. It's a meditation on art versus life. The solution is unbelievably intriguing, I think. There's a whole family psychodrama in there. And every move of the plot, she's also moving on a—every move of the plot is impelled by a revelation of character. So plot and character are utterly intertwined, distilled together.I don't think any of the others can do that. I think Dorothy Sayers would take twice as many pages. And she'd dot every i and cross every t, and she couldn't bear loose ends or anything, could she? And she liked to reveal her knowledge of other things, almost to—I think the others like you to know that they're a bit better than the genre, maybe. Their detectives are superhuman, almost; wish-fulfillment man, almost.She doesn't do that with Poirot. He's just pure omniscience, really, plus a few tics and traits and, you know, mustache. I think it's that distillation and simplicity and the way she inhabits the genre in a way that the others don't quite do. And at the same time, she's redefining it from within.OLIVER: There's something as well, I think, about—she gets past the kind of Sherlock Holmes model in a different way. They still all have a bit of an overreliance on that, maybe.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: Whereas Poirot in, what is it? In something like, is it Murder in the Mews? Very sort of Sherlock and Watson—THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: —kind of dynamic. But within, I don't know, two or three novels, that's gone, and he's Poirot as we know him, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes, yes.OLIVER: And she kind of, as you say, makes it her own thing and goes off in new directions.Christie and the TheaterTHOMPSON: Yes. She's sort of conceptual and the others aren't quite, I think. She doesn't do—she does something completely different with the whole concept of what a solution is, it seems to me. She doesn't—it's not Cluedo, is it? It's not, there's six of them, and eventually it has to be one of them; however many tergiversations or however you say that word, you sort of know that. Whereas with her, it's: it's nobody, or it's everybody, or it's the policeman, or it's a child, or there's something bigger and bolder going on.And she writes—I think she writes very theatrically. I think she writes scenically. I think she's incredibly good at character and action. That scene where you know the girl's a thief because Poirot leaves out 23 pairs of silk stockings, and he goes back in the room and there's 19 or something like that, tells you everything. It's all in there.OLIVER: The solution to 4.50 from Paddington, which we shan't reveal, but—THOMPSON: That's Cards on the Table. But what I mean is, she's given us a little scene that tells us all we need to know about that person, really: a sort of timid thief who can't resist—OLIVER: Yes, but that's what I'm saying. At the end of 4.50, the solution is staged.THOMPSON: Oh, sorry. Yes.OLIVER: It is literally a little re-creation of the drama, if you see what I mean.THOMPSON: Yes, I do. Sorry, Henry. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: No, no. We're crossed wires.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, yes.OLIVER: But she is very theatrical, yes.THOMPSON: No, you are absolutely right. That's a reenactment.OLIVER: Of something that was seen almost like in a—you know, the whole thing is very—THOMPSON: Yes, yes. Well, she was a great—I mean, obviously Shakespeare, but she was a great lover of the theater as a medium. And of course, she wrote plays, as we know, which I think are far weaker than her books, myself.OLIVER: Even The Mousetrap?THOMPSON: Especially. [laughter] When did you last see it? Or have you not—OLIVER: I've seen it once. I've seen it—you know, I don't know, before I had children, a long time ago. And I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun. The ending of act one, when someone opens a door and they say, “Oh, it's you.” It's very dramatic moments. You don't like it?THOMPSON: No, I think you're right. I wouldn't mind seeing it done really, really well. There's something strong at the heart of it, that theme that haunts a lot of her books about what happens to children who are unwanted.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Which is in loads of her—no, not loads. It's in Ordeal by Innocence. It's in Mrs. McGinty. That's, I think, because that happened to her mother. Her mother was given away as a child. Her own mother was a poor widow and gave up her daughter to be raised by her rich sister, which is not—it's not abandonment, but I think—OLIVER: Well, yes.THOMPSON: — it's not great. And I think all these things were absorbed by Agatha as a child. She grew up in what we would today call a house of—I hate this—strong women. I hate that “strong woman” thing, but they were strong women. Her mother was very, you know, as we've said, a sort of driving little person. And the rich grandmother, the poor sister, the dynamic there, they both fed into Miss Marple.And then her older sister, Madge, who was a big personality and actually had a play on in the West End before Agatha did, which I've always thought was extraordinary, just to write a play and have it on in the West End in 1924.And the men were—the father was feckless and charming and a rather grand New Yorker, he grew up as, and then settled in Torquay. And the brother was the Branwell Brontë. [laughter] He ended up a drug addict, which is also a type that feeds into her fiction: the man who could have made something of his life and goes wrong.The TV AdaptationsOLIVER: So all this theatricality in the books is obviously why she adapts so well to TV, and again, a lot of the others don't.THOMPSON: Yes, that's true.OLIVER: How famous would she be now without the TV adaptations?THOMPSON: Well, by 1990, so the centenary, she was a hell of a lot less—and that's really when the Poirots got going, which she never wanted. She never wanted—she didn't really want Murder on the Orient Express. It was only because it came via Lord Mountbatten. I don't know. I don't know because I think they're mostly not very good. I don't know what you think about the adaptations. But maybe that's deliberate, that they're less—if they drove you back to the books, you'd probably get quite a pleasant surprise.OLIVER: It's hard for me to say because I saw them all more or less after I'd finished reading her.THOMPSON: What did you think?OLIVER: I love Joan Aiken—not Joan Aiken, what's she called?THOMPSON: Yes, Joan Hickson is marvelous. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Hickson. I think she's just perfect because as you say, the simplicity, the not overstating. The “Pocketful of Rye” episode where she turns up and quotes the Bible, and the vicious older sister is there, and they have that moment. It's all so cleanly done.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree.OLIVER: David Suchet, I quite like him. I think he has those wonderful moments. “I cannot eat these eggs. They are not the same.” I think that's very good. It's very funny, you know, he gets it.THOMPSON: You prefer him in spats and art deco mode to when he became—he became like a de facto member of the House of Atreus by the end, hadn't he? It had gone very, very—OLIVER: I mean, I certainly didn't watch them all, no, no.THOMPSON: No. Well, I sort of had to.OLIVER: Yes, you did.THOMPSON: But I could never get through those short story ones. I don't think I've ever got—OLIVER: The moral sort of doom of it all, yes.THOMPSON: Well, the early ones, when they always had—you could see they'd hired a car for the day. [laughter] And I don't think I've ever got to the end of one of those.But I think—sorry, going back to your question, I think they probably did make a massive difference. You know, they're really, really popular. And whether she would have—what you think her—she might be read as much as somebody like Sayers if it weren't for all those adaptations. But then the fact of all those adaptations tells its own story in a way, because that wouldn't happen to one of the others, as you rightly said.Resurgence and PopularityOLIVER: No, they don't have that quality. And also, she was bigger than them. That's why they picked her, because she was bigger than them anyway.THOMPSON: And simpler. Because when I used to read them at university between the pages of Beowulf or whatever, like porn, [laughter] it was a bit mal vu. You read her for entertainment. But you certainly—I don't think—she's always been admired by a certain kind of French intellectual, hasn't she, for that subtextual quality that she has, that sort of fathomless quality that she has.But when I researched that biography, which I started in 2003, I can remember going on the radio. And names will not be named, but I was like a figure of fun with a couple of other detective writers, quite well known, who just sort of openly mocked me for taking her seriously and more or less said, “Oh yeah, we love her, but she's terrible” kind of thing. “Why are you taking her seriously?” I mean, it was regarded as a bit of a joke to take her seriously.I'm not saying I changed the game or anything like that, but I think there must have been a movement around that time in the early twenty-naughties—whatever the damn thing, decade's called—to start seeing that she is an interplay of text and subtext, facade and undercurrents, and these powerful foundations that underpin her books. Murder on the Orient Express is, you know, “Does human justice have the right to exert itself when legal justice has let it down?”There are these very strong—I think this is part of why she's survived the way she has. We intuit powerful truths underneath the Christie construct, if you like. I always say she's not real, she's true. I think she's incredibly wise about human nature, possibly more than any of them.You take a book like Evil Under the Sun, and there's a femme fatale who's murdered. “Oh, the femme fatale. No man can resist her.” Turns out she can't resist men. She's prey; she's not a predator. And of course, women who are so dependent on their looks and so on, that is what they are. They are prey. They're not predators. They're very, very vulnerable. Just a really small thing like that. And I just think, oh, you're very—there's so much easy wisdom in there somehow.And she deploys it perhaps differently—I mean, Ruth Rendell is wise, but it's very, “I am wise and you're going to pay attention to me.” You know what I mean? It's all very, “I'm very dark and very wise and very,” you know. I love her, but everything's so easy with Agatha. It's so, to coin a phrase, two tier. You can read them and have fun with them. You can read them and there's so much stuff going on underneath, and yet she presents this smooth face. I don't think any of the others are quite that resolved, if you like.Self-AdaptationsOLIVER: Now, you wrote that her own stage adaptations of The Hollow and Five Little Pigs lack the subtlety of the original books, quote, “almost as if Agatha herself did not realize what made them such good books.” How much of her talent do you think was unconscious in that way?THOMPSON: Yes. That's such a good question. I do think that, about those plays, it could have been that she just thought, “That's not what my audiences are going to want from me. They're just going to want to be entertained by”—we know she can do the other thing because of her Mary Westmacott books, where everything is laid out. They're not distilled at all; they're quite the opposite.I think they must have been such a pleasure for her to write because she didn't have to constantly—they're unresolved; they ask questions that don't have to be answered. She could have done that with those plays, I'm sure, but I think she would've thought people aren't coming to see them for that. I think she had a very good opinion of herself, in the best possible way.OLIVER: Hmm.THOMPSON: Like I said to you earlier, she didn't take a lot of notice of anything anybody said to her. Because it is like writing this other little book, the one I've just done about 1926. She was very acclaimed right from the start. I didn't emphasize that enough in the biography. And she was really recognized as very special right from the start.And I think it's extraordinary to me how—it's so difficult for us today, isn't it? We're so at the mercy of “That won't sell, don't do that, blah, blah, blah.” She really did not just plow her own furrow, but create that furrow in a way that you can only compare with, like, Lennon and McCartney. Or whether the time was absolutely right that they let her run, they trusted her to do what she wanted, and because she had the gift of pleasing readers . . .You do really feel, although those books are very tight and taut, you do feel an instinctive ease in what she's doing, an instinctive sort of—there's a kind of liberated—which sounds perverse because they are so controlled, the books. But I always feel she's doing exactly what she wants to do because she knows what it is and she knows how to do it. Because I think, would she be amazed that you and I are having this conversation now? I don't know that she would be, really. What do you think?OLIVER: No, I agree with you. I think she had what Johnson said, the felicity of rating herself properly. I think she knew she was really good.THOMPSON: You might know he'd say it right.OLIVER: Yes. [laughs] But there's a—I think there must have been something about—I think it's in Poirot's Christmas, one of those, where someone gets killed in the night in their bedroom, and they go up. And one of the women says, “Who would've thought the old man had so much blood in him?”And the quotation just sort of occurs to—I think there's quite a lot of that in Christie, right? Things are coming up and it fits. And she's good enough to run on instinct at times.THOMPSON: That's right. That's it. Exactly. That's absolutely right. Like the way she quotes from the—yes, I love the bit when she quotes from the Book of Saul in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which is really quite a profound novel about whether—I mean, it's terribly timely—whether it's better to be run by a corrupt capitalist or to let in the radicals. And as I said in the biography, the corrupt capitalist wins on points. But then another element enters, which is what power does to people. And that's when she quotes from the Book of Saul.And it's just like you said, this—an instinctive that she—I do always feel her as an instinctive writer, even though—her notebooks are intriguing because obviously some plots she really has to work away at. And yet they feel felicitous. A coup like The ABC Murders, and she's really—that went through lots and lots of iterations. But what she'll often do is scribble down a line of dialogue, a line of “There they are.” It's the whole—it's not bullet points, which is a loathsome concept. It reminds me of a bee going from flower to flower and knowing exactly which—and she's got this gift of knowing what flowers we're going to need.I sometimes fear I overdo it. I don't want be like one of those people who's writing a PhD on, what was the thing I said on Substack, gynocracy in St. Mary Mead or whatever. It's not—I do think that's a bit overdone these days, the rummaging in the subtext, because she's an interplay. And that's why I write that chapter in the book called “English Murder,” which is about the facade, you know, “smile and smile and be a villain.” And there's nothing more interesting. There's nothing more interesting than murder among classes who are trying to cover things up.And she does that—that's at the heart of golden age murder, I suppose. And I just think she does that better than anybody because she's so all the things we've been talking about. She's so distilled, she's so simple, she's so smooth, she's so instinctive. And she's doing it the way she wanted to do it because of your wonderful Dr. Johnson quote. She knew not to take notice of other people, including her—Quick Opinions on ChristieOLIVER: Should we have—THOMPSON: Yes. Go on.OLIVER: Sorry, sorry. Should we have a quick-fire round?THOMPSON: Please.OLIVER: I will say the name first of a few of her books—THOMPSON: Oh, god.OLIVER: —and then a few other detective writers, and you will just give us your unfiltered opinion: good, bad, ugly, indifferent.THOMPSON: Okay. What fun.OLIVER: You can “nothing” them if you want to.THOMPSON: Okay. [laughter]OLIVER: Hallowe'en Party.THOMPSON: Underrated. Very interesting on sixties counterculture and the effects of societal breakdown, et cetera. What do you think?OLIVER: I think it's a real page turner. I remember reading that for the first time. I loved it. Yes. Nemesis.THOMPSON: I can't keep saying the same thing. Underrated. [laughter] Very interesting philosophy of love in that book, I think. I think it harks back to her first marriage. However badly it turns out, it's better to have experienced it. It's quite a mournful novel.OLIVER: The Mr. Quin—THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Oh, sorry.THOMPSON: No, no. Sorry. You carry on. Marvelous. So inventive, don't you think? Such a clever character.OLIVER: Why didn't she do more of him?THOMPSON: Yes, that would've been good. And she was always interested in the commedia dell'arte. She wrote poems about it as a girl. And the concept of Mr. Quin, yes, as this sort of evanescent figure who's also a moral force, isn't he really? Or—yes, I wish she'd done more. They're marvelous.OLIVER: Towards Zero.THOMPSON: Oh, top notch, don't you think?OLIVER: One of the best.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree. Frightening motive. Very Ruth Rendell.OLIVER: It's very distinct in her. I haven't read all of her novels, but it's very distinct.THOMPSON: But the plot is, again, typical of her because it redefines the word contingent. [laughs] I mean, Dorothy Sayers would be having palpitations. She's very bold and grand like that. “Oh, there's a loose end. Oh, who cares?” You know, I mean, it's so—it just drives along that book, doesn't it? Yes. But I agree with you, one of her best.OLIVER: Death on the Nile.THOMPSON: Quite moving, I think. I think it's one of those ones from the thirties that, again, is talking about love in a way that—I think it just strikes a personal note to me because she was very in love with her first husband, Archie Christie. And he did fall in love with another woman, and it did cause her extreme pain that some people said to me she never quite got over.And I feel that a little bit in that book. There's a shadow of something quite powerful in that book, I think. Again, very, very loose and lovely plot, but powerful. Would you agree? Very good on the place as well, I think, Egypt.OLIVER: I love it. I think the solution is great.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And it makes a really good film.THOMPSON: It's a great film, yes. Wonderful film.Other Mystery WritersOLIVER: Yes. Okay. A few other detective writers: Michael Innes.THOMPSON: You've got me. I haven't read him. Should I?OLIVER: Oh, I think you will like him. Yes. Try Hamlet, Revenge!THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Oh, I like it already.OLIVER: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, this is exciting. Gladys Mitchell.THOMPSON: Can't get into her.OLIVER: No.THOMPSON: What do you think? Should I try a bit harder?OLIVER: I read two. I thought they were good. I was not intrigued.THOMPSON: No, somebody told—OLIVER: The ones I read—Spotted Hemlock is a wonderful, like, wow, that's great.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Somebody said to me, I know she really—no, I didn't—I read it in a book that she really hadn't liked Agatha Christie, but you know, who knows? All that Detection Club rivalry, you can imagine. But okay, Spotted Hemlock—if I'm going to read one, try that, yes?OLIVER: Yes, that's a great book. Margery Allingham.THOMPSON: Kind of love her, but I never understand her plots. I always feel I'm in a bit of a fog, but she's quite a good writer. Do you think? Or what do you think?OLIVER: She's good at the fog. She's good at that sort of whirligig sense that there's a lot going on—THOMPSON: Yes, whirligig.OLIVER: —and you've got to get to the end before they do, kind of thing.THOMPSON: Also, she had a pub in her sitting room. Now, I like a woman who has a pub in their sitting room.OLIVER: [laughs] E. C. Bentley.THOMPSON: You've got me again, Henry.OLIVER: Oh, The Blotting Book mystery. You'll like this.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay.OLIVER: The other one is not so good, but you'll like that a lot.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Edmund Crispin.THOMPSON: Didn't get on with him.OLIVER: Why not?THOMPSON: Don't know. Don't know. It sounds like I don't read the men, doesn't it? Which is not the truth at all.OLIVER: I think that's fair enough, isn't it?THOMPSON: Well, I don't know. I don't think anyone's ever come up with a really good reason why women have shone so brightly in this genre. I don't know. Why didn't I—I read that one, the toyshop one [The Moving Toyshop] or whatever. I don't know. I just didn't get on with it.OLIVER: Too glib?THOMPSON: Possibly.OLIVER: Bit flippant, bit sort of funny-funny?THOMPSON: Possibly. I just couldn't quite get hold of it in some way. I don't know.OLIVER: I quite like Edmund Crispin, but I do think he's got a bit of a “he's a very clever boy” about him.THOMPSON: Maybe that's what it was. Maybe that.OLIVER: Something, yes. G. K. Chesterton.THOMPSON: I haven't read Father Brown. Oh, this is awful, isn't it? I'm starting to sound like a radical feminist by accident.OLIVER: [laughs] Maybe that's what you are, Laura. Maybe you just need to admit it. [laughs]THOMPSON: No, it does. It sounds really bad because I do really love almost all the women. I just, I don't know why I haven't read him.Christie and NostalgiaOLIVER: Was Agatha a nostalgia writer?THOMPSON: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think anyone who was a nostalgia writer would've written At Bertram's Hotel, which is an entire spin on the riff of nostalgia. Really clever. I think that's such a clever book. The way she traps us in her golden age, you know, this phantasmagoria of the re-created golden age. And then she says, “Ha, really fooled you.”I've written about this. I think she moved with the 20th century far more than is realized. I love those Cold War novels she writes about her dislike of ideologies. I love her postwar books about the fragmentation of the hierarchical society. I think she's—well, she's an incidental social historian, as are, I think, P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, but they're much more underlined about it. Again, I'm intrigued what you think. Do you think she is?OLIVER: I think there's definitely some quality, particularly to the Miss Marple stories—as you say, the social history sort of becomes a way of preserving something that's disappearing. One of them, written in the sixties—you can tell me which one—it opens with that description of all the new houses in the village and the mothers who give their children cereal for breakfast. And what sort of a thing is that to give a child? They should have bacon and eggs. Bacon and eggs is a real—you know, and she does have a real something heartfelt and real sense that this part of England is going, and this new thing is coming in.THOMPSON: That's true. That's absolutely true. That's The Mirror Crack'd. And it's—OLIVER: The Mirror, yes, yes.THOMPSON: Yes, and that whole thing of Mrs. Bantry's house has now been bought by a film star and blah, blah, blah. Yes, no, you are absolutely right. I didn't think hard enough before I answered your question.OLIVER: But no, what you said is also true. I can't sort of work out to what extent she regrets it, to what extent it's just useful material for her, you know?THOMPSON: Both. I mean, some of her late books, including Endless Night, I think, which is an incredibly modern book—that whole “me, me, me” culture of “I want, therefore I will have now,” which is written when she was quite an old lady. And then a book like Passenger to Frankfurt, which is—it's a bit sub–Brave New World, but it's very honest and pessimistic about a future—well, the one we are living in, really—full of fear and uncertainty and almost dystopian.She was a realist. You know, she is Miss Marple in a lot of ways. She was a realist in a way that I think a lot of us would find it difficult to be. And her American publishers were often—would sort of say, can she tone this down? Can she not have a young person who's completely evil? Readers want to know, is she going get any therapy? [laughter] And it's so true. There's quite a lot of that going on.She's very clear-eyed. So if she—I'm a bit nostalgic for Blur, do you know what I mean? I mean, you can't help it, in a way, like that brilliant example you give at the start of The Mirror Crack'd. But I would say her image is quite at odds with the reality of her in that way. But the image—OLIVER: And the adaptations don't help with that.THOMPSON: No. No. But at the same time, that Christie image, you know, the gentlewoman, the tea or the eternal bridge party, blah, blah, blah, that has a huge power of its own. So just being too iconoclastic about her, I think, is also a lie. Because I think, again, it's that interplay. She used the image, and the image—I hate the word cozy. I loathe the word cozy, but there's no denying that any book of that kind does have that quality. So I suppose even that's nostalgic in a way.Christie's PoshnessOLIVER: In a way, yes. How posh was she?THOMPSON: Good question. I've been thinking about that a lot. Quite, I would say. Quite grand, with that confidence. Her father really was—as I said, he was a young blade in New York dancing with Jennie Jerome and blah, blah, blah. And then it so happened that he ended up in Torquay, which of course then was very posh. And the fact that when she disappears, she disappears to Harrogate, [laughs] which is like the Torquay of the north.I remember her grandson saying to me, “She dealt with her literary agent. To her, he was staff.” You know, that kind of thing. Her sister, there is a—well, her sister ended up very grand indeed with a huge house up in Cheshire.I think she just had that internal confidence, really. She wasn't—and that there wasn't much money. I mean, there was very little money when she was growing up, as of course you know, but that didn't matter. I mean, her voice is insane. Her voice is, [affecting a posh voice] “Oh, it's lucky it just happens.” [laughter] But yes, there's a part of her that is real late Victorian upper middle class that, again, underpins her books.It's amazing really how broad-minded and cosmopolitan she was. But possibly, I mean, possibly that does—she was—you know, when she disappeared, she was described in foreign newspapers as an Anglo-American, the embodiment of Englishness, and that's how she was described. And then of course she was genuinely cosmopolitan in her love of travel and her love of other cultures and all that obvious stuff. Yes.Inspirations for Miss MarpleOLIVER: How much of her grandmothers is in Miss Marple?THOMPSON: Quite a lot, I would say, particularly the—OLIVER: Drawn from life?THOMPSON: Well, in an essential way not, because Miss Marple has no real experience of life in that way. We're occasionally told about some chap who came calling who wasn't suitable or whatever, but she's almost defined by nonexperience of life in a sense, but observation of life. She's an observer. She's not an outsider in the way that Poirot is. She has a place within the social hierarchy and whatever, and that village has a reality to it. And the way it changes has a reality to it. But she is defined by being an observer, I would say.But Margaret Miller, who was the rich grandmother, who is the one who had the big house at Ealing and was—you know, she's the one who would go to the Army and Navy stores and all that stuff that's in At Bertram's Hotel. She was—there's a lot of her in Miss—I think, as I say in the book, she grew up with the sound of female wisdom in her ears. You know, her grandmother was the sort of—if she'd seen her up in Harrogate, she would've known exactly what was going on. You know, one of those kind of women who could spot an affair at a hundred paces, just a wise sort of woman, worldly, worldly woman.And Miss Marple is worldly in her thinking, but not in her experience, particularly in a book like A Caribbean Mystery, which I think is—she's a real sophisticate, Agatha. I mean, I'm reading The Hollow again at the moment. And it's really astounding to me how there's a love affair at the center of it with a young woman who's kind of a self-portrait and this married man. And not only, there's not—it's not only nonjudgmental; there's literally no concept of judgment being in the vicinity. It's really, really sophisticated, grown-up stuff, I think. And again, I think that's maybe not recognized about her that much.Nursery RhymesOLIVER: What are the importance of nursery rhymes to her?THOMPSON: Yes, that's interesting. They're part of that distilled quality she had, I suppose, that really simple ability to catch hold of something that is simple and familiar in itself and then subvert it. There's books where she—I don't think she needs it in Five Little Pigs. I think the book is almost too good for that.But is it not to do with that—like her titles, which are really, really simple with a faint frisson of the sinister about them. Is it not that ability she has to catch, to take something really, really simple and subvert it for her own ends? What do you think? Do you think that's right? Or do you think it's something more than that?OLIVER: No, I think the simplicity is the point, and I think it probably gives her a way of talking, of showing how fundamental the wickedness is. And as you say, the children can be evil, and it's part of the darkness in a way, but it gives the appearance of innocence and, oh, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe? You know, children do this. And so it leads you through and makes it worse somehow. [laughs]THOMPSON: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. But I know I've—how many times have I said the word simple? But I really do feel that's the heart of her. And I also feel it's the heart of why she was misunderstood when I was growing up reading her because it was mistaken for simplistic.Wartime ProductivityOLIVER: Why was she so productive during the war? I mean, there were four books one year.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And as you say, they're some of the best. I mean, what is it about the war that gets her so busy?THOMPSON: Well, she was on her own, which she had never been, really. Well, obviously she divorced her first husband in 1928. So there's a couple of very bleak, dead years before she met her second husband and married him in 1930. But she wasn't completely on her own because she had her friend Charlotte Fisher, who was a sort of secretary-companion, but much more than that—really, really good friend.But in the war, Max Mallowan was abroad. Her daughter—she had one child—her daughter was married and living in Wales. And she was living in the Isokon building in North London, which I love because that's like, “You think I'm chintzy and old fashioned. And here I am socializing with the sort of left-wing intelligentsia at the Isokon building.” And there's something about being in that adorable little flat—they're so fabulous, those flats—and being alone but not feeling abandoned, as she had after her first marriage.And I suppose also, you know, war is, you either cower in despair or you think, “Right, well, better get on with it.” War is stimulating in that way. I think it was to quite a few writers, maybe, or quite a few creatives. The shadow of death. But there was something about that solitude but not abandonment, plus the stimulation of not knowing whether it was your last day on earth that did—it did. I mean, it's absolutely insane how productive she is.And then she wrote—she had a week off. She was also working as a dispenser at a London hospital, and she had a week off. And she wrote a Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring, which is one of her best Westmacotts, I think. I mean, she's got a week off and she writes a book. I mean, Jesus, there's a challenge to us, Henry. [laughter]The Mary Westmacott NovelsOLIVER: What are those Mary Westmacotts like? Because I've never read them, but you seem very—THOMPSON: Oh, have you not?OLIVER: You're very up on them. You like them?THOMPSON: I am. I really am. Well, for a biographer, they were a treasure trove because they're very revealing. Unfinished Portrait is, I think, as close as you are ever going to come to a true autobiography, as opposed to the actual autobiography, which is charmingly disingenuous.OLIVER: And also dull. No? I mean, it's just so dull.THOMPSON: Do you think? It is a bit.OLIVER: I couldn't read it. I couldn't read it. No, it was so long and so leaden. I felt like she didn't really want to tell me the story of her life. Just couldn't.THOMPSON: Well, I think that's probably right. It was very heavily edited after her death. And her daughter was very, very protective of her. So, Max Mallowan as well. So maybe there was a much better book in there somewhere. Who knows?OLIVER: So we should read Mary Westmacott if we want the unfiltered Agatha?THOMPSON: I would say Unfinished Portrait. It really fascinates me because the worst time you've ever gone through in your life—so in 1926, she lost her mother and her husband in the space of four months. And I think an awful lot of people, even writers, would think, “I'm going to put that behind me and get on.” But she had to reopen the wound. She had to go through it all again eight years later. I find that really, in itself, incredibly revealing about her.Poirot vs. MarpleOLIVER: Why is there so much more Poirot than Marple?THOMPSON: Yes, I've wondered that because there is this little thing that she hated him, which I don't really think she did. It's just something people say, isn't it?OLIVER: Well, it's a common thing about artists. They're supposed to hate their most successful work, but—THOMPSON: Yes. Yes. All I could come up with was that he was easier to put in different places. He could conceivably be on the Nile or in Mesopotamia or—I mean, it would be a—she does manage to get Miss Marple to the West Indies, but it's certainly—OLIVER: There are only so many holidays your nephew can send you on.THOMPSON: He was really successful, that nephew, wasn't he? Who do you think he was like? Sort of Ian McEwan or—OLIVER: [laughs] I know. It was sort of crazy, isn't it?THOMPSON: And very kind to her.OLIVER: It might be to her credit that she doesn't do a Midsomer Murders thing and just sort of wave away and say, “Oh, we can just have as many of these murders as we want.” She says, “No, we can only fit—” Do you think maybe that's it?THOMPSON: I think there might be a bit of that. I mean, her notebooks sort of—some of the books were originally Marples, like Cat Among the Pigeons and Death on the Nile, in fact. And then they became Poirots. I just wonder whether he's a bit more malleable because she is a more rooted, fixed entity.And he is—I don't mean to denigrate David Suchet because he's a fantastic actor, but he does root him more than I think the written version. I think he is a sketch on the page. And one of her great skills, I think, is how she can sketch, and they've got that quality of aliveness on the page, which you just can't analyze, really. I don't—well, I can't. And that's how I see Poirot. So he was more movable in that sense.And she's incredibly good at certain—like Sleeping Murder, there's no way you could have him in that. And Miss Marple is—her qualities are so perfect for a book like that, which has suddenly reminded me of how she got me into John Webster. I never read John Webster until—OLIVER: [laughs] That's great.THOMPSON: The way she uses The Duchess of Malfi is so clever. Do you think that's right about Poirot? Do you think there's something more . . .Reader Preferences and SalesOLIVER: I can see that. I wondered if there was some reader's prejudice involved.THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Poirot is the sort of exotic—Sherlock Holmes, one thing that makes him popular is that he's a bit wacky, you know. And Poirot—he's always talking about, “You English are so xenophobic. Excuse me, I am Belgian.” And with the eggs and all the little—whereas Miss Marple's just the kind of old lady that we all wish there were more of. And how much of that will readers take? I don't know.THOMPSON: Yes. Although, as I say, she, she did—I mean, I think her publishers did like her to do Poirot, but I don't know that she would've been influenced by that necessarily. I mean, maybe she was—maybe I'm overdoing her—OLIVER: Well, she had these terrible money problems. Didn't she have to be a little bit focused on the dollar?THOMPSON: She did. She did, but she didn't—well, I mean, the money problems are insane because they were absolutely no fault of her own. They were to do with test cases, and it was just this sort of accumulation of horror that put her in tax problems during the war. And she really never could dig her way out of them and was advised to go bankrupt twice, which is unbelievable, just as a way of clearing it. I mean, it's terrible.But I don't know that she—I think her attitude was a bit more, “Well, why should I even bother if they're just going to take it away from me?” In 1948 she didn't write anything at all because I think she thought, “What's the point?” But then, that wasn't her way. But I don't know that she thought of writing as a way of digging out of it necessarily. But I could be—OLIVER: The Marples, did they make less money? Were they, did they sell less?THOMPSON: Not really. I think they all sold. Even poor old Passenger to Frankfurt sold hugely, absolutely hugely. I think people—I mean, my parents would—it was like people just wanted them, the Christie for Christmas.Rereading ChristieOLIVER: How many times have you read these books? Do you ever get bored?THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: Really?THOMPSON: Well, I have them on rotation, and I don't—as you know, I do interleave them with our beloved Elizabeth Bowen, who's my passion at the moment, and other people. But they are consolatory, I suppose. They are—there's bits of—there is this kind of—there's bits of them that I just know completely off by heart, like the gramophone record in And Then There Were None and all that.But there's something—and maybe I should have said this earlier, when I say—I've said it on Substack—that they're fairy tales for adults. There's something about that. There's an almost physical sensation of pleasure, really, when the resolution comes. It is a bit like act five of Shakespeare. I'm not going to say she's quite on that level. Not even I am going to say that.But there is—and it is like being a child again and reading the end toward the happy-ever-after, even though her happy-ever-afters are sometimes compromised. And there is something almost primal in that pleasure. And it almost sounds borderline mad, me saying it like that, but I do think there's something in it because the resolution is so—because it's character based, and at her best, she's character and plot as one, as in Five Little Pigs or The Hollow or Murder on the Orient Express or blah, blah, blah.Her resolutions do tell you something about human nature. You do think, “Oh, yes, that is what that would be. Yes, it would be all about money. Yes. Yes, doctors are untrustworthy,” or something on a more profound level than that. There's something that is a satisfaction, both childlike and I'm experiencing it as an adult. In my defense, P. G. Wodehouse said you can never read them too many times. [laughs] It doesn't matter if you know who did it. There's so much pleasure in them.Thompson's CareerOLIVER: Now, I want to ask a little bit about your career.THOMPSON: Mm-hmm.OLIVER: You were at a sort of stage school, then you studied at Merton, and then you worked at The Times.THOMPSON: Yes. Very briefly. Yes.OLIVER: How does one therefore go from all of this to being the biographer?THOMPSON: Well, I did always think I would have a career in—I wanted to direct plays. I directed Hamlet after university, which is probably the thing I'm still proudest of. But what it was, was that I wrote a couple of books. I won an award when I was quite young.And then I had an agent who—I said to him, “I want to write a biography of Nancy Mitford.” And he wasn't very keen on the idea, but I must have written an okay proposal. Again, because I thought Nancy Mitford was a little bit undervalued, that she's a lot more than just a posh girl. And at the time her reputation was quite low. And so somebody bought into that idea, and it sort of went from there, really.But it's a bit—I sometimes look back at the books I've written, including a memoir of my publican grandmother, and I think, gosh, this is all quite scatter-gun, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you should just write the books you really want to write. But it was a passion for Nancy Mitford that sort of started that particular ball rolling.And then I had the idea of—oh, no. I was down in Devon with a boyfriend, and he said, “You never stop talking about Agatha Christie. Why don't you try and write her biography?” And that was just a luck of timing because her daughter was still alive. So I met her, and she liked me because I knew the Mary Westmacotts so well, and that sort of happened. I mean, quite often these things are very fortuitous, don't you think? Did you not find that with your book?OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, I did. I did. I think some writers, as you say—I don't think of it as scatter-gun. I think of it, it's sort of an emergent thing, and you happen to have these different interests, and you just follow your nose, and that's fine.THOMPSON: Yes, exactly.OLIVER: Tell us about this production of Hamlet.THOMPSON: Oh. Do you know, I think it was not bad. I had a very good Hamlet. I think if you've—well, you're in trouble without—who is now quite a successful actor. And we were all really young, but he was—I saw him in something and said, “Do you want to play Hamlet for me?” And he said, “Okay then.” And it was a room above a pub in Chelsea, and it was very spare and very quick.And it was about—I can't bear when people overanalyze the character of Hamlet, and why does he delay? He delays because Shakespeare wants him to, so that he can write all those incredible speeches. That's a bit simplified, but it was—he was so, he so understood the translucent power of those soliloquies, this actor. So it just sort of worked because we didn't do too much to it. And it was, yes, it was good. I think it was good. But then I did Macbeth, and that was much less good.Secretly Reading ChristieOLIVER: And you've said here, and I think you said it in your book, that when you were at Merton, you were reading Agatha Christie between the covers of what you were supposed to be reading.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, I was.OLIVER: That can't be—is that a slight exaggeration, or did you really not get on with the syllabus?THOMPSON: Well, hang on. I was a bit stuck in the first term. Can you imagine coming from a performing arts school—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —and then being told, “Read that bloody, you know.OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, it's intense.THOMPSON: All I knew was French. How I got in is a minor mystery, but there it was. I've tried to do it honor ever since by writing as best books I possibly can. But I was okay once I got over that bit. Once I got into my beloved Tennyson and all the people we've been talking about, Hardy and blah, blah, blah. Larkin, about whom the best thing I've ever read—the best thing I've ever read about Larkin is your Substack about him, without a shadow of a doubt.OLIVER: Oh, thank you.THOMPSON: Just wonderful. So I sort of winged it a bit, but I had a very nice don. And the autodidact side of me, which is very like Agatha Christie, who barely went to school, and Nancy Mitford—I think it can be a good thing in a way, because you have such a respect for learning and truth. I always try to be truthful in my biographies, which as we know, not everybody is. [laughter]And I think you carry on wanting to learn and carry on wanting to fill all the gaps because I only had half an education, because in the morning you would do ballet and drama and all that kind of thing. So it is a bit odd, but in some ways I think it's been a good thing.OLIVER: Now, the new book is about the 1926 disappearance. When can we expect it to be published?THOMPSON: It's only a short book—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —because obviously I covered it a lot in the biography, and it doesn't—but I have found out a couple of new things. And that will be out in August here and in November in America. And I have come up with a slightly different slant on it, but mainly—and I treat it a little bit like a cold case. And it was—I had to write—I wrote it in five weeks, but it was incredibly good fun. Oh, and I reenacted her journey, which was very interesting, to Harrogate.But mainly it's such a pleasure because I, you know, on Substack, and I think, “Oh, you can't write about Agatha Christie again.” There always seems to be quite a lot to say. I'm intrigued by how you, who I think of as a true intellectual, how you have clear regard for her.Henry on Agatha ChristieOLIVER: I started reading her when I was about 12, and I just thought she was great, and I went through most of them. But I read them at intervals. So I was reading her into my twenties, thirties. And before this interview I tried to—I thought, “Laura's always saying Five Little Pigs is the best one. I'm going to read it.” And I just sort of found that I've lost the taste, in a way.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Which I was quite, I don't know, just maybe—I feel like this is my failing. Maybe I should take a week off and sit by the pool and read it properly. But I've always thought she's really, really great, and very few people can do that many very compelling stories without you sort of thinking, “Oh, I've read this one. I know. Yes. It's the same as the other one, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it was the”—as you say, it's not Cluedo. Even Dorothy L. Sayers, I don't think I could read much more by her, frankly. Great, she's great, but it's enough. [laughs]THOMPSON: Well, I quite like her. The whole—most girls who went to Oxford are quite keen on Gaudy Night, and the character of Harriet Vane is quite satisfying, I think.OLIVER: Indeed, indeed. And Strong Poison is great. And there—but I just mean if she'd written as many books as Agatha, you can't imagine it would've sustained the level of quality.THOMPSON: No, no. There is that lightness in Agatha and that terrible cliché of, “I wrote a long book because it was too—I didn't have enough time to write a short book,” and all that kind of thing. The brevity amazes me. When I said at the start, most writers would take twice as many pages to get all that in.She has style—I don't know if you can call it a style, but there is something blindingly effective about it that nobody can imitate. And it does—there's something so fathomless about her, and that's what continues to compel me. But I think it's very lovely of you to do this if you are no longer an admirer because you've let me sort of—OLIVER: Well, it's not that I'm not an admirer. It's just that I don't—I had this with P. G. Wodehouse. I read quite a lot of it, and now, I don't know, somehow I've reached a point where it's—I sort of get it, but it's just not that funny anymore. I don't know, just need some time away.THOMPSON: Well, maybe. Maybe, but you know, I'm a bit—she's part of my life now. It's like if somebody said, “You can't read her anymore,” it would be like, “You can't listen to the Rolling Stones anymore.” I mean, it'd be like a kind of death. She's part of my life the same way they're part of my life. She's now inseparable from just the way I go on, as is Shakespeare. And if I had to lose one of them, trust me, it would be her, you'll be reassured to know. [laughter]OLIVER: Very good. Laura, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much.THOMPSON: Oh, I've really enjoyed it. I really have. And I was really looking forward to it, and it's been even nicer than I thought it would be. So thank you.OLIVER: Oh, it's been delightful.THOMPSON: Thank you so much, Henry.OLIVER: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Donna Leon's memoir, "Wandering through Life," gave her fans a colorful tour through her life, from childhood in New Jersey to adventures in China and Iran, to her love of Venice and opera. Nowhere, however, did she discuss her writing life.Now in her new collection of essays "BACKSTAGE: Stories of a Writing Life," Donna reveals her admiration for, and inspiration from, the great crime novelists Ruth Rendell and Ross Macdonald, examining their approach to storytelling as she dissects her favorite books of theirs. She expresses her love for Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and her appreciation for Sir Walter Scott's generosity of spirit. And she chronicles the amount of research she undertakes to be able to present her characters and work authentically.

Written by Ruth Rendell under the pen name Barbara Vine

Bloque 1: "Monarch", "Una Familia Normal", "Dejar El Mundo Atrás" Tema: Too Close de Next Bloque 2: "Caballos Lentos", "Lessons of Chemistry" Libro: Algunos Mienten, Otros Mueren de Ruth Rendell. Si te gustó te invitamos a SUSCRIBIRTE para no perderte ningún episodio. Nuestras redes sociales. TW: @guillohernandez IG: @guillohernandezok Edición: Diego Díaz.

Our guest this week, Ritu Mukerji, is a busy, full-time physician and a mother of 3, but she managed to find time to write her first novel, a recently published historical fiction mystery titled Murder by Degrees about a female physician in late 19th century Philadelphia. She was inspired by her love of the mystery genre as well as her experience living in Philadelphia while getting her medical degree where she would often visit places where female doctors had paved the way for other women to follow. We chat with Ritu about why physicians can make good detectives, and she shares some of her favorite mystery series and the recipe for her favorite Thanksgiving side dish that's been prepared in her family for over 30 years. You can find Ritu on socials at @ritumukerji and at her website: www.ritumukerji.com Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod FaceBook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message, go to our website and click the Contact button. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Murder by Degrees by Ritu Mukerji 2- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie 3- Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle 4- Maisie Dobbs series by Jaqueline Winspear 5- Inspector Rutledge series by Charles Todd 6- Books by PD James, Ruth Rendell, and Barbara Vine 7- Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell 8- Truman by David McCullough 9- Grant by Ron Chernow 10- Lincoln by David Herbert Donald 11- The Dry by Jane Harper 12- Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry 13- The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani 14- The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujata Massey 15- George: A Magpie Memoir by Frieda Hughes 16- H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald 5 Star Read Recpmmended by Fellow Book Lover Amy @readthisandsteep - Mercury by Amy Jo Burns Ritu Mukerji's family recipe Cranberry Salsa (adapted from Oakland Tribune, Nov 1990) -2 cups cranberries -4 tsp grated orange peel -2 large oranges, peeled to remove white membrane, then coarsely chopped -1/4 cup minced onion -1/4 cup olive oil -1 tbsp minced cilantro -1 tbsp minced ginger -1 small hot green chile (jalapeno or serrano)--stemmed, seeded and minced -salt to taste Whirl cranberries in a blender until chopped, then empty in a bowl. Add orange peel, chopped orange (drained), onion, oil, cilantro, ginger and chile. Mix well and blend sauce; add salt to taste. Serve, or cover and chill, as long as overnight.

Our guest this week, Ritu Mukerji, is a busy, full-time physician and a mother of 3, but she managed to find time to write her first novel, a recently published historical fiction mystery titled Murder by Degrees about a female physician in late 19th century Philadelphia. She was inspired by her love of the mystery genre as well as her experience living in Philadelphia while getting her medical degree where she would often visit places where female doctors had paved the way for other women to follow. We chat with Ritu about why physicians can make good detectives, and she shares some of her favorite mystery series and the recipe for her favorite Thanksgiving side dish that's been prepared in her family for over 30 years. You can find Ritu on socials at @ritumukerji and at her website: www.ritumukerji.com Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod FaceBook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message, go to our website and click the Contact button. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Murder by Degrees by Ritu Mukerji 2- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie 3- Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle 4- Maisie Dobbs series by Jaqueline Winspear 5- Inspector Rutledge series by Charles Todd 6- Books by PD James, Ruth Rendell, and Barbara Vine 7- Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell 8- Truman by David McCullough 9- Grant by Ron Chernow 10- Lincoln by David Herbert Donald 11- The Dry by Jane Harper 12- Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry 13- The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani 14- The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujata Massey 15- George: A Magpie Memoir by Frieda Hughes 16- H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald 5 Star Read Recpmmended by Fellow Book Lover Amy @readthisandsteep - Mercury by Amy Jo Burns Ritu Mukerji's family recipe Cranberry Salsa Cranberry Salsa (adapted from Oakland Tribune, Nov 1990) -2 cups cranberries -4 tsp grated orange peel -2 large oranges, peeled to remove white membrane, then coarsely chopped -1/4 cup minced onion -1/4 cup olive oil -1 tbsp minced cilantro -1 tbsp minced ginger -1 small hot green chile (jalapeno or serrano)--stemmed, seeded and minced -salt to taste Whirl cranberries in a blender until chopped, then empty in a bowl. Add orange peel, chopped orange (drained), onion, oil, cilantro, ginger and chile. Mix well and blend sauce; add salt to taste. Serve, or cover and chill, as long as overnight.

Alex Hay grew up in Cambridge and Cardiff and has been writing for as long as he can remember. He studied History at York University and wrote his dissertation on female power in royal courts, combing the archives for every scrap of drama and skulduggery he could find. He has worked in magazine publishing and the charity sector and is a graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative Write Your Novel course. The Housekeepers is his debut novel and won the Caledonia Novel Award 2022. Alex lives with his husband in South East London. Alex's Book ChoicesThe Railway Children  by E NesbittThe House of Stairs  by Ruth Rendell as Barbara VineSee here for the relevant excerpt from the Railway Children academic article Ed was talking about... Buy Alex's excellent book The Housekeepers  here.Pre-order Chasing the Light, Julia's sequel to Shooters, here.Keep in touchWe love our listeners, and we want to hear from you. Please leave a review on one of our podcast platforms and chat with us on social media:Twitter: @twolitchicksInstagram: @two_lit_chicksTikTok: @two_lit_chicksEmail: hello@twolitchicks.orgThank you so much for listening.Listeners, we love you.Two Lit Chicks Podcast is recorded and produced by Your Voice HereSupport the show

A series of radio plays from the short stories by Ruth Rendell.

Author, actor and comedian Charlie Higson goes head to head with bestselling screenwriter and author, Alex Michaelides, in a war of the words! The guests discuss their new novels, writing for screen, the crime genre, finding ideas and how much of yourself you should put in a book. They also give us some brilliant book recommendations, including a deep dive into some Hollywood biographies. In the Book Off, they pit Ruth Rendell's "A Judgement In Stone" against "From The City, From The Plough" by Alexander Baron, but which one will win? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Catherine Lea is a thriller writer whose latest book, The Water's Dead, is New Zealand's answer to Vera Stanhope. It's the first in a new Kiwi crime series, a thriller with surprising twists. Hi there, I'm your host Jenny Wheeler, and on Binge Reading today Catherine talks about her new character, Detective Inspector Nyree Bradshaw and her race against time to solve a murder where everyone has something to hide and no one is telling the truth. If she fails, it's likely a child dies. It's the first in a new series. We've got our usual free book offer for listeners... this week its historical fiction you can check out here: https://books.bookfunnel.com/freehistoricalfiction/7c9k9s2u28 GET FREE HISTORICAL FICTION Or on our Binge Reading Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JennyAtBingeReading) And don't forget, for the cost of less than a cup of coffee a month you can get exclusive bonus content, like hearing Catherine's answers to the five quick five questions, by becoming a Binge Reading on Patreon supporter. It would be great to have a few more people on board supporting the show with the weekly costs. support binge reading on patreon Links to information mentioned in the show: Ann Cleeves: https://www.anncleeves.com/ Ruth Rendell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Rendell Ngaire Dawn Porter: https://www.nzonscreen.com/profile/nyree-dawn-porter/biography Elizabeth McClaine Mystery series: https://www.authorcatherinelea.com/books The Dry by Jane Harper: https://janeharper.com.au/books/the-dry Ed McBain: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21318.Ed_McBain Chris Hammer: Scrublands, https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/crime-mystery/Scrublands-Chris-Hammer-9781760632984 Where to find Catherine Lea:  Website: https://www.authorcatherinelea.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author-Catherine-Lea-1138506476177298/Twitter: @CatherineLeaNZBookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/catherine-lea What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now, here's Catherine. Introducing thriller author Catherine Lea Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Catherine and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us. Catherine Lea: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be there with you. Catherine Lea - Page-turning thriller writer Jenny Wheeler: It's wonderful, almost a novelty to have a fellow New Zealander. I don't deliberately choose or not choose Kiwis. I choose people who fit the books we're doing, but it's lovely to have somebody who's writing those books in New Zealand.  Catherine Lea: Thank you. That's why I decided to write the books in New Zealand. I've got some set in the States. When I started writing – I put my first book out in 2013 – somebody said, don't set them in New Zealand for goodness sake, nobody will ever read them. Set them in the States. So that's what I did. And of course, then the process began. I decided to set a politically based thriller and boy, their politics are quite different to ours. It was such a lot of research. I thought, you know what? I know far more about New Zealand. We have got such an amazing country, such diverse cultures, so much flavor, so much brilliance and the country is so beautiful. Why not set them here? Jenny Wheeler: To backtrack a bit, you write thrillers with heart, as your website says, and you have done several international page-turners. We will get to those a little later on because they are worth talking about, but your latest book, the one we're focusing on because it has just come out, is called The Water's Dead. It's a police procedural set in the far north of New Zealand where you live. Writing a police procedural a new game That is a bit of a change for you, and it's good to get in right at the beginning and talk a little bit about why you it made that.

“My book starts in my brain with me telling myself a story. And I choose not to write it down, as I'm thinking about it. Sometimes for months, sometimes even maybe for a couple of years. My feeling is that if I stop thinking about it, or stop daydreaming about the story, then it's died a natural death in my brain and shouldn't make it to the page.” Nine strangers, one determined detective and plenty of devious ways to die; Peter Swanson's latest whodunnit, Nine Lives, is a creepy, entertaining ride, and he joins us on the show to talk about Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell and his other literary influences, Maine, trading poetry for crime fiction, and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.   Featured Books: Nine Lives by Peter Swanson Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer, edited by David Eitel, and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays).

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon is a British Labour Co-operative Party politician. She was Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council. Jan Royall grew up in Hucclecote and Newnham on Severn, where her parents ran a shop.She was educated at the Royal Forest of Dean Grammar School and Westfield College, University of London, where she gained a BA in Spanish and French in 1977.She was a special adviser to Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party, in the 1980s, and she has remained a close ally of his ever since. She sought selection as Labour's candidate for Ogmore in a 2002 by-election, losing to Huw Irranca-Davies. In 2003 she became head of the European Commission office in Wales.She is the currently principal of Somerville College, Oxford.Support the show (https://www.interactstrokesupport.org)

#myopinion #book #review #ruthrendell

with alanSupport the show (https://www.interactstrokesupport.org)

AudioLivro não deixe de curtir e compartilhar para que o conhecimento chegue a todos.Infelizmente nosso canal não é monetizado quem poder ajudar agradeço de coração.Apoia nosso canal em https://apoia.se/audiobooksnarvalSegue nosso PIX: audiobooksnarval@outlook.comNossa loja Shopee: CalifóniaStoreMuito obrigado!!!Estamos em todas as principais plataformas de Podcast

Remember Agatha Christie, P.D James, Ruth Rendell? Of course you do. I'm adding a new ‘Queen of Crime Fiction' to the list: Carol Wyer. Carol will probably blush at the comparison, (she's humble like that), but I'm adding her any way. When you read her work, I think you'll agree. Former teacher and linguist, Carol is a USA Today bestselling author and winner of The People's Book Prize Award. Her crime novels have sold over 1 million copies. January 2017, saw her move from humour to police procedurals with Little Girl Lost, the first in the DI Robyn Carter series. February 2021, saw the release of the first in the much-anticipated new series, featuring DI Kate Young. An Eye for an Eye was chosen as a Kindle First Reads and became the #1 bestselling book on Amazon UK and Amazon Australia. As well as writing crime, Carol also writes comedies because, as the ex-stand-up comedian claims, “Laughter is the best medicine”. But more than all the above, Carol is a fabulously generous and kind soul. When we were little more than ‘twitter colleagues', I reached out to her for some editing advice on my own book, How to be a Buddhist Millionaire. She was incredibly supportive. I loved every second of this interview and am grateful to Carol for finding the time to speak to us. As ever, I hope you enjoy this episode. Please take the time to share it with someone you think might benefit. Until next time. Lots of love. Matt and the team x

Dream Girl: By Laura Lippman Website: https://gobookmart.com "With this tip of the hat to Stephen King's Misery, Dream Girl is funny and suspenseful, with a dread-worthy final twist." -- People “My dream novel. I devoured this in three days. The sharpest, clearest-eyed take on our #MeToo reckoning yet. Plus: enthralling." -- Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and The Fever "Perceptive, often amusing insights into a writer's mind make this a standout. Lippman is in top form for this enticingly witty, multilayered guessing game." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Lippman never stops twisting the plot into a deliciously intricate pretzel, right up to the jaw-dropping finale. This is both a beguiling look at the mysteries of authorship and a powerful #MeToo novel, but that's only the tip of a devilishly jagged iceberg..." -- Booklist (starred review) "Lippman (Lady in the Lake) nods at Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock in this hair-raising tale, but makes it wholly hers and completely riveting. She conveys the horror of being housebound and reliant on strangers, as well as the fear of losing one's mind. It's a page-turning, plot-twisting masterpiece." -- Library Journal (starred review) “The closest writer America has to Ruth Rendell.... What makes this book special, even extraordinary, is that the crossword puzzle aspect is secondary...[Lady in the Lake] reflects the gulf which then existed between what women were expected to be and what they aspired to be.” -- Stephen King, New York Times Book Review, on The Lady in the Lake “Don't miss this novel.” -- Anna Quindlen, New York Times bestselling author, on The Lady in the Lake “A cavalcade of narrators—including Cleo's ghost, who wants Maddie to stop poking into her world—and Lippman's expert storytelling bring the city's tensions wondrously to life.” -- People on The Lady in the Lake “Inspired by the unsolved death of Shirley Parker... Lippman's ambitious novel weaves some twenty points of view into a seamless, vivid whole. The novel demonstrates that Lippman, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, is both a skilled journalist and a masterful novelist.” -- Washington Post on The Lady in the Lake --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gobookmart-review/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gobookmart-review/support

On this week’s episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Meredith are discussing: Bookish Moments: A joint bookish moment of gatherings of Bookish Friends Current Reads: some YA fantasy, some murder, some short stories, some family drama. We’ve got it all. Deep Dive: the tropes we love - what is a trope and which ones draw us in? Book Presses: two books that we hugged at the end As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you’d like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don’t scroll down!  New: we are now including transcripts of the episode (this link only works on the main site). These are generated by AI, so they may not be perfectly accurate, but we want to increase accessibility for our fans! *Please note that all book titles linked below are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!*   . . . . 1:18 - Currently Reading Patreon Bookish Moments: 3:38 - Fabled Bookshop Current Reads: 6:52 - 10 Things to Tell You Episode 108 with Kaytee and Meredith. 6:55 - Lobizona by Romina Garber (Meredith) 8:46 - Twilight by Stephanie Meyer 9:55 - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling 10:00 - 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 10:47 - Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (Kaytee) 13:40 - A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell (Meredith) 14:01 - From Doon with Death by Ruth Rendell (#1 in the Wexford series) 17:42 - We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker 19:50 - The Arsonist’ City by Hala Alyan (Kaytee) 19:58 - Sarah’s Instagram bookedinadvance 21:17 - Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan 21:36 - Infinite Country by Patricia Engel 23:15 - The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett (Meredith) 23:24 - Kerry’s instagram @linesiunderline 26:01 - The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman 26:33 - The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet 27:02 - Night at the Fiestas by Kirsten Valdez Quade (Kaytee) 27:49 - What ARE biscochitos? Deep Dive - Tropes: Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em 34:20 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 35:01 - The Black Count by Tom Reiss 36:50 - The Secret History by Donna Tartt 37:10 - Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey 37:51 - The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Hayes 37:54 - The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 37:56 - Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery 39:46 - The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker 39:59 - Scythe by Neal Shusterman 40:27 - All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai Books We Want to Press Into Your Hands: 43:09 - To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer (Meredith) 47:49 - Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah (Kaytee) Connect With Us: Meredith is @meredith.reads on Instagram Kaytee is @notesonbookmarks on Instagram Mindy is @gratefulforgrace on Instagram Mary is @maryreadsandsips on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast.com @currentlyreadingpodcast on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast@gmail.com Support us at patreon.com/currentlyreadingpodcast

Reading through the twentieth century, one murder mystery at a time. Find more information about this episode at shedunnitshow.com/century. The ten books I talk about are: — The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (1905) — Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley (1913) — The Cask by Freeman Wills Crofts (1920) — The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers (1934) — Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie (1943) — Death in Captivity by Michael Gilbert (1952) — From Doon With Death by Ruth Rendell (1964) — Death of an Expert Witness by P.D. James (1977) — Appleby and the Ospreys by Michael Innes (1986) — Black and Blue by Ian Rankin (1997) Other sources: — The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books by Martin Edwards — Bloody Murder: from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel by Julian Symons There are no major spoilers in this episode, but the opening plot scenario of each book is discussed briefly. There is a major spoiler for the Sherlock Holmes story "The Final Problem" from 1893.  NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK independent bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/centurytranscript. Thanks to today’s sponsors. You can get $5 off mail based Victorian mystery game Dear Holmes at dearholmes.com/shedunnit using code "shedunnit" at checkout. The audiobook of Laura Ruby's Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All is on a special deep discount through May, and you can find that through your audiobook retailer of choice. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details.

Why did stories of criminals become irresistible for novelists? Starting with works like Moll Flanders in the eighteenth century, this lecture goes on to examine the role of criminals in Dickens, keen to let his readers and characters experience what Pip in Great Expectations calls 'the taint of crime'. To what ends? How does the recent genre fiction of novelists like Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell return us to the transgressive pleasures of Defoe's criminal autobiographies?A lecture by John Mullan 24 FebruaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/crime-fictionGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Neste episódio, o escritor best-seller Raphael Montes conversa com Jéssica Balbino e Tadeu Rodrigues e fala sobre o livro “Bom dia, Verônica”, escrito em parceria com a autora criminal Ilana Casoy, que originou também a série de mesmo nome, sucesso na estreia na Netflix.  A trama conta a história a partir da vivência da escrivã Verônica, que após ver uma mulher se matar em sua frente na Delegacia de Homocídios, passa a investigar um golpista que caça que mulheres pela internet. E, em paralelo, ela cruza com a história de Janete, que na série é interpretada por Camila Morgado e de Brandão, um policial militar interpretado por Du Moscovis.    No bate-papo, discutimos perfis de serial killers, processo criativo, cenas fortes e várias outras curiosidades.    Livros citados:   A Louca da Casa, de Rosa Montero Mulheres Empilhadas, de Patrícia Melo Um Assassino Entre Nós, Ruth Rendell   Acompanhe!   Ouça, curta e compartilhe!    Apoia-se - Jéssica Balbino: https://apoia.se/jessicabalbino⁣ 

For more than 30 years, Deepa Balsavar of Mumbai, India, has been developing curricular materials and collaborating with experts to create educational resources. A few of her works led to an opportunity to write and illustrate children's books beginning in 2005. Since then, Deepa has flourished in her talents as a writer and artist. Her first children's book "The Seed", published by Tulika, was selected in 2007 an Outstanding International Book for Children in the White Ravens Catalogue put out annually by the International Youth Library in Germany. While Deepa views herself as being "the same person that I always was" when younger, she began her 60s with her most recent book "Nani's Walk to the Park" – published by Pratham Books – having earned the Best of Indian Children’s Writing (BICW) Contemporary Awards in 2019.In this interview, Deepa talks about her journey to becoming a children's author and illustrator, some of her favorite book projects, as well as how she prioritizes her skillsets as a creator. Additional Resources:This Medium article about "Nani's Walk to the Park" includes images of some draft and final illustrations of the book.Deepa's Instagram account Deepa's Recommendations:- Books by David Quammen, Ruth Rendell, and Sue Grafton- "My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises"by Fredrick BachmanShuva's Recommendation:- "Phoebe the Photographer: Gets a Camera" written by Beryl Young and illustrated by Darya ShchegolevaIf you enjoy this show, click here and follow the instructions to leave a review.Interested in starting your own podcast? Sign up here for your own Buzzsprout account.

Sevin Okyay bu hafta eski bir polisiye romanla yayında. Kitap ilk olarak 1985'te yayınlandı ve popüler kahramanı Müfettiş Wexford'u anlatıyor. Sevin Okyay kitaptan bir bölüm okutuyor, romana ve yazarına ilişkin yorumlar yapıyor.

Participants in the Just Desserts Mystery Discussion Group talk about books by author Ruth Rendell.

It’s the birthday of English crime novelist Ruth Rendell (1930-2015), who said, “The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.”

Is Star Trek a crime series in disguise? Who says seven figure advances are a bad idea? Could you hide a million pounds for three weeks and where in the world is Bob? Adam Croft and Adrian Hobart attempt to answer these questions in the latest episode. They also discuss David Mark and Val McDermid’s perspectives on the publishing industry, the resurgence of the short story, Adrian’s new business venture and the true benefit of hidden camera shows.  You’ll also find out who ‘English Jane’ is and hear a special report from Bob. ~ Moriarty ~ RECOMMENDATIONS Murder in Midsummer by by Ruth Rendell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr, G K Chesterton, Michael Innes, Julian Symons, Ellis Peters https://www.kobo.com/nl/en/ebook/murder-in-midsummer Closer To You by Adam Croft  https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/closer-to-you-6 Don't forget your exclusive Partners in Crime discounts through Kobo. Get 90% off your first purchase using the code CRIME at checkout. And you can also get 40% off all books using the code PARTNERS when you shop using this link: bit.ly/PartnersKobo CONTACT US Email: hello@partnersincrime.online Facebook: facebook.com/groups/crimefictionpodcast/ Twitter: twitter.com/crimeficpodcast Website: partnersincrime.online Apple Podcasts: croft.link/PIC-podcast Stitcher: bit.ly/PIC-Stitcher Google Play: bit.ly/PIC-GooglePlay YouTube: bit.ly/PIC-YouTube

Bonne année à tous ! Pour cette première émission de l’année 2020, voici une affiche réjouissante qui, nous l’espérons, vous plaira autant qu’à nous : Mon Territoire, de Tess Sharpe, traduit par Héloïse Esquié, publié chez Sonatine, 566 pages. Corruption, de Don Winslow, traduit par Jean Esch, publié chez Harper Collins (broché et poche), 592 pages. Le Journal d’Asta, de Ruth Rendell, traduit par Pierre Ménard, publié chez Calmann Levy, 436 pages. Et voici nos coups de cœur : pour Laure : Sérotonine, de Michel Houellebecq, chez Flammarion pour Léo : 22/11/63, de Stephen King, au Livre de Poche pour Éva : L’Aube à Birkenau, de Simone Veil et David Teboul, aux Arènes. et Coralie relaie le coup de cœur d’Amandine et de notre auditrice Claire pour le film « Les Filles du Docteur March » de Greta Gerwig.

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomes best-selling author Lisa Unger to the studio. ABOUT LISA: Lisa Unger is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of seventeen novels, including THE STRANGER INSIDE. With millions of readers worldwide and books published in twenty-six languages, Lisa Unger is widely regarded as a master of suspense. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few writers including Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie. The Edgar-nominated UNDER MY SKIN is also a finalist for the prestigious Hammett Prize, and the Macavity Award for Best Novel. And the original short story THE SLEEP TIGHT MOTEL is a #1 bestselling single. Unger's critically acclaimed books have been voted "Best of the Year" or top picks by the Today show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, Amazon, IndieBound and many others. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Travel+Leisure. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her family. @copyrighted. Listen on soundcloud.com/authorsontheair or your favorite podcast app

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomes best-selling author Lisa Unger to the studio. ABOUT LISA: Lisa Unger is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of seventeen novels, including THE STRANGER INSIDE. With millions of readers worldwide and books published in twenty-six languages, Lisa Unger is widely regarded as a master of suspense. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few writers including Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie. The Edgar-nominated UNDER MY SKIN is also a finalist for the prestigious Hammett Prize, and the Macavity Award for Best Novel. And the original short story THE SLEEP TIGHT MOTEL is a #1 bestselling single. Unger's critically acclaimed books have been voted "Best of the Year" or top picks by the Today show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, Amazon, IndieBound and many others. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Travel+Leisure. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her family. @copyrighted. Listen on soundcloud.com/authorsontheair or your favorite podcast app

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomes best-selling author Lisa Unger to the studio. ABOUT LISA:      Lisa Unger is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of seventeen novels, including THE STRANGER INSIDE. With millions of readers worldwide and books published in twenty-six languages, Lisa Unger is widely regarded as a master of suspense. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few writers including Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie. The Edgar-nominated UNDER MY SKIN is also a finalist for the prestigious Hammett Prize, and the Macavity Award for Best Novel. And the original short story THE SLEEP TIGHT MOTEL is a #1 bestselling single. Unger's critically acclaimed books have been voted "Best of the Year" or top picks by the Today show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, Amazon, IndieBound and many others. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Travel+Leisure. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her family. @copyrighted.  Listen on soundcloud.com/authorsontheair or your favorite podcast app

Prominent book editor-turned-author, Peter Guzzardi, spent some time with me this week to discuss how he pulled back the curtain on the writer's life, finding courage in front of the blank screen, and important lessons from the Yellow Brick Road for creatives. "One thing I love about this work is the variety. I’ve edited novels by authors as different as Ruth Rendell and Martin Amis, memoirs by Tony Curtis...and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar..." – Peter Guzzardi Peter has been a professional book editor for nearly 40 years. After getting his start in marketing, writing catalog copy in New York City, he moved to the editorial side where he eventually took the reins at Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House, Inc. Mr. Guzzardi has worked with some incredibly talented authors over the years, including Stephen Hawking on A Brief History of Time, Deepak Chopra on dozens of books, Douglas Adams on his Hitchhiker novels, Carol Burnett, Martin Amis, Arianna Huffington, and even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Like so many aspiring writers who "swear they're going to finally write that book," Peter decided to throw his hat in the ring and write about the wisdom he'd accumulated on his own journey. The result of that hard work is his recently published Emeralds of Oz: Life Lessons From Over the Rainbow, an apropos title for 2019, the 80th anniversary of the film classic, The Wizard of Oz. Emeralds of Oz is a book in the "...tradition of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten ... life lessons drawn from the most beloved movie of all time," and Carol Burnett said, "I loved this book as much as I loved the movie." This episode of The Writer Files is brought to you by the team at Author Accelerator. Author Accelerator book coaches give writers feedback, accountability, and support while you write, so you can get that your idea out of your head and onto the page. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. In Part One of this file Peter Guzzardi and I discussed: How he came to rub elbows with so many celebrity authors The unique skillsets of great editors and their importance to the publishing industry Why the challenges the author faced birthing his own book were so different than he could have imagined How he found courage in front of the blank page The importance of crappy first drafts and turning off your inner critic Show Notes: PeterGuzzardi.com Emeralds of Oz: Life Lessons from Over the Rainbow by Peter Guzzardi [Amazon] The Wizard of Oz at 80: how the world fell under its dark spell - Luiza Sauma for The Guardian Peter Guzzardi on Instagram Peter Guzzardi on Twitter Peter Guzzardi on Facebook Kelton Reid on Twitter Please click the PayPal Donate button to support The Writer Files with a secure PayPal donation

Varför är det så viktigt att en berättelse är trovärdig? Och är det verkligen viktigt? I det här avsnittet pratar Åsa och Sissel om vad som gör en bok trovärdig och vad som händer om den inte är det. Behöver en bok vara trovärdig för att vara bra? Till vår hjälp har vi författaren Gabriella Ullberg Westin som pratar om hur det är att skriva en trovärdig deckare och hur hon gör research för sina böcker. Böcker det pratas om i podden är: "Det var vi som var Mulvaneys" av Joyce Carol Oates, "Station K" av Peter Stjernström, "The Organized Mind" av Daniel Levitin, "Staden" av Camilla Sten, "Allt jag fått lära mig" av Tara Westover, "De oroliga" av Linn Ullman, "Daisy Jones and The six" av Taylor Jenkins Reid, "Kärlekens Antarktis" av Sara Stridsberg, "Never let me go" av Kazuo Ishiguro, "Världarnas krig" av H G Wells, "8" av Dustin Lance Black, "Flickan från ingenstans" av Justin Cronin, "Hur jag lärde mig att förstå världen" av Hans Rosling och Fanny Härgestam, "De odödliga" av Chloe Benjamin, "A Judgement in Stone" av Ruth Rendell, "Förrädaren" av Gabriella Ullberg Westin See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we're visiting Erin Kelly, the critically acclaimed author adored by hundreds of thousands of readers – she’s been topping bestseller lists since the publication of her debut, The Poison Tree. Her latest novel, Stone Mothers, is an addictive story about love, lies and secrets. Erin is a reading addict and a true scholar of fiction. We talked about writing ambitions, failures that lead to success and being mentored by Ruth Rendell from beyond the grave.BOOKSDaisy Buchanan - The SisterhoodElaine Dundy - The Injured PartyErin Kelly - The Poison TreeErin Kelly - Stone MothersKerry Hudson - ThirstRuth Rendell - Make Death Love MeRuth Rendell - A Fatal InversionDonna Tartt - Secret HistoryEvelyn Waugh - Brideshead RevisitedDaphne Du Maurier - RebeccaCS Lewis - Chronicles of NarniaJeff Kinney - Diary of a Wimpy KidJacqueline Wilson - Tracy BeakerJacqueline Wilson - The Suitcase KidPaula Danziger - Cat Ate My GymsuitLois Duncan - Stranger With My FaceLois Duncan - I Know What You Did Last SummerStephen King - CarrieVirginia Andrews - Flowers in the AtticVirginia Andrews - Garden of ShadowsJD Salinger - Catcher in the RyeNorton Anthology of English LiteratureShelley Harris - VigilanteCarol Ann Duffy - Collected PoemsErin Kelly - He Said She SaidErin Kelly - The Burning AirGillian Flynn - Gone GirlSJ Watson - Before I Go To SleepPaula Hawkins - Girl On The TrainAndrea Newman - Bouquet of Barbed WireAndrea Newman - A Sense of GuiltAndrea Newman -Three Into Two Won’t GoAndrea Newman - A Share of the WorldDaisy Johnson - FenEley Williams - AttribHelen Simpson - CockfostersAnna Hope - ExpectationAnna Hope - The BallroomSally Rooney -

Author and journalist Kamal Ahmed and naturalist and presenter Brett Westwood join Harriett Gilbert to discuss favourite books by by Michael Faber, James Baldwin and Ruth Rendell. Under the Skin by Michel Faber Publisher: CanongateNotes of a Native Son by James Baldwin Publisher: PenguinThe Keys to the Street by Ruth Rendell. Publisher: HutchinsonFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2019.

"Casi Humanos" es un relato perteneciente a una recopilación de historias policiacas recogido en un libro titulado "Damas del Crimen" escritas por cinco de las principales exponentes del género: Alicia Giménez-Bartlett, Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith y P.D. James con estilos completamente diferentes. Música: Dr. Saxlove "Jazz Noir" https://lanebulosaeclectica.blogspot.com.es/

Bokcirkeln går i mål! Författaren Åsa Larsson, poeten och psykoanalytikern Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson och Marie läser tillsammans med er lyssnare ut vår bokcirkelbok: Stenarna skola ropa, av Ruth Rendell. Så var det dags, sista träffen för vårens bokcirkel är här! Tillsammans med författaren Åsa Larsson, poeten och psykoanalytikern Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson, Marie och er lyssnare går bokcirkeln i mål och läser ut "Stenarna skola ropa" av Ruth Rendell. Vi befinner oss på den engelska landsbygden det är 60-tal och i familjen Coverdales stora hus jobbar Eunice Parchman. Hon städar, fejar och håller rent. Men lika lätt som hon rör dammvipporna över bokhyllor och fönsterkarmar, lika tungt bär hon på sin hemlighet. En hemlighet som kommer att sluta i döden för familjen Coverdale. Ja, varmt välkomna att vara med och läsa! Programledare: Marie Lundström Producent: Alba Mogensen

Tillsammans med er lyssnare, deckarförfattaren Åsa Larsson och poeten och psykologen Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson bokcirklar vi om Ruth Rendells krimklassiker "Stenarna skola ropa." Tillsammans med er lyssnare, deckarförfattaren Åsa Larsson och poeten och psykologen Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson bokcirklar vi om Ruth Rendells krimklassiker "Stenarna skola ropa." Vi befinner oss på den engelska landsbygden det är 60-tal och i familjen Coverdales stora hus jobbar Eunice Parchman. Hon städar, fejar och håller rent. Men lika lätt som hon rör dammvipporna över bokhyllor och fönsterkarmar, lika tungt bär hon på sin hemlighet. En hemlighet som kommer att sluta i döden för familjen Coverdale. Ja! Välkomna att vara med och läsa. Till den här träffen har vi läst fram till och med kapitel 18. Programledare: Marie Lundström Producent: Alba Mogensen

Tillsammans med er lyssnare, författarna Åsa Larsson och Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson läser vi Ruth Rendells deckarklassiker "Stenarna skola ropa". Ruth Rendells klassiska roman "Stenarna skola ropa" utspelar sig på den engelska landsbygden, färgteven har precis kommit, ska vi gissa att det är 60-tal. Till familjen Coverdale kommer en kvinna vid namn Eunice Parchman. Hon har blivit anställd för att städa och hålla rent i det stora huset. Men hon har en stor hemlighet: hon kan varken läsa eller skriva. Och det, det kommer att bli slutet på familjen Coverdales liv. Men, är det riktigt så enkelt? Varmt välkomna att vara med och läsa! Tillsammans med författarna Åsa Larsson och Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson bokcirklar vi, och till första träffen har vi läst fram till och med kapitel 8. Såhär ser lässchemat ut för de andra träffarna: Träff två: fram till kapitel 18. Träff tre: resten av boken. Programledare: Marie Lundström Producent: Alba Mogensen

Författaren Åsa Larsson, poeten och psykoanalytikern Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson och Marie läser tillsammans med er lyssnare ut vår bokcirkelbok: Stenarna skola ropa, av Ruth Rendell. Så var det dags, sista träffen för vårens bokcirkel är här! Tillsammans med författaren Åsa Larsson, poeten och psykoanalytikern Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson, Marie och er lyssnare går bokcirkeln i mål och läser ut "Stenarna skola ropa" av Ruth Rendell. Vi befinner oss på den engelska landsbygden det är 60-tal och i familjen Coverdales stora hus jobbar Eunice Parchman. Hon städar, fejar och håller rent. Men lika lätt som hon rör dammvipporna över bokhyllor och fönsterkarmar, lika tungt bär hon på sin hemlighet. En hemlighet som kommer att sluta i döden för familjen Coverdale. Ja, varmt välkomna att vara med och läsa! Och så möter vi poeten Linnea Axelsson, här med sitt diktepos Ædnan är, som på gammal nordsamiska betyder landet, marken och jorden. Ædnan kretsar kring två samiska familjer men speglar samtidigt samernas moderna historiera från 1900-talets början till idag. Programledare för Lundströms Bokradio är Marie Lundström. Producent är Alba Mogensen och Fredrik Wadström. All musik som är med i Lundströms Bokradio hittar du på programmets egen spotify-lista. Klicka HÄR så kommer du till den.

Vårens första bokcirkelträff är här! Välkomna att läsa "Stenarna skola ropa" av Ruth Rendell. Tillsammans med er lyssnare, författarna Åsa Larsson och Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson läser vi Ruth Rendells deckarklassiker "Stenarna skola ropa". Romanen utspelar sig på den engelska landsbygden, färgteven har precis kommit, ska vi gissa att det är 60-tal. Till familjen Coverdale kommer en kvinna vid namn Eunice Parchman. Hon har blivit anställd för att städa och hålla rent i det stora huset. Men hon har en stor hemlighet: hon kan varken läsa eller skriva. Och det, det kommer att bli slutet på familjen Coverdales liv. Men, är det riktigt så enkelt? Varmt välkomna att vara med och läsa! Till första träffen har vi läst fram till och med kapitel 8. Såhär ser lässchemat ut för de andra träffarna: Träff två 17 februari: fram till kapitel 18. Träff tre 24 februari: resten av boken. Och så är författarskolan i Lundströms Bokradio tillbaka! Vi möter vi den engelske författaren Philippe Sands. Nyligen kom hans bok "Vägen till Nürnberg" ut på svenska. I Lundströms Bokradio berättar han om vikten av detaljer, och hur han går tillväga när han sätter sig ned för att skriva en roman. Romanerna som nämns i reportaget med Philippe Sands är de här: Stefan Zweig "Världen av igår" och "Hjärtats oro" Jozef Wittlin Moj Lwow (Mitt Lwow)  Joseph Roth Judar på vandring All musik som är med i Lundströms Bokradio hittar du på vår egen spotify-litsa. Klicka HÄR så kommer du till den. Programledare: Marie Lundström Producent: Alba Mogensen och Fredrik Wadström

Här kan du lyssna på hela vår bokcirkelbok "Stenarna skola ropa" av Ruth Rendell som radioföljetong. Varmt välkomna att lyssna på vår bokcirkelbok som radioföljetong! Här inläst av Kerstin Nilsson. I radiobearbetning av Sven Trolldal från år 1992. Den inlästa boken är en tidigare översättning än den version som vi läser i bokcirkeln, så några ord och meningar kan skilja sig åt. Varmt välkomna att vara med! Producent för inspelningen: Sven Trolldal.

Vi möter två av vårens debutanter, och så dyker vi ned i radions arkiv och går på anställningsintervju med Gunnar Ekelöf och Tomas Tranströmer. Författaren Rafael Donner är här med sin första bok "Människan är ett känsligt djur. Boken är en samling essäer om skam, ensamhet, manlighet, stolthet. Är vi i grunden ensamma varelser? Och kan litteraturen göra oss mindre ensamma? Det blir ett samtal som berör allt från skrivande till uppväxten på landet i Finland på 90-talet.   Och så kommer en annan av vårens debutanter hit: Jacob Sundberg som skrivit boken "Vi hör av oss." Det är en novellsamling med nio noveller som alla kretsar runt anställningsintervjuer. Han hjälper oss att reda rätt: vad är det för språk vi använder när vi söker jobb? Vi letar oss även bakåt i radions arkiv och tar hjälp av några, inte helt okända, poeter för att få svar på vanliga frågor man kan få på anställningsintervjuer. All musik som är med i programmet hittar du på vår egen spotify-lista. Klicka HÄR så kommer du till den. Nästa vecka har Lundströms Bokradio uppehåll och är tillbaka lördag den 10 mars. Då drar vårens första bokcirkel igång! Tillsammans med er lyssnare, poeten UKON och författaren Åsa Larsson läser vi romanen "Stenarna skola ropa" av Ruth Rendell. Till första träffen läser vi fram till och med kapitel 8. Häng med! Programledare: Marie Lundström Producent: Alba Mogensen & Fredrik Wadström

Crime and Thriller writer Mark Edwards brings us our first Writer's Routine of 2018!With 7 solo-books to his name, and 6 co-written works, a few years ago Mark finally turned into a full-time writer. His novels have a dedicated following, who crave stories packed with suspense, mystery and the frequent feeling that something supernatural may turn up.Mark is in the mould of Ruth Rendell or Stephen King, and like many full-time writers, has to squeeze his work between the hours the kids are at school! We talk about what he thinks his characteristic style is, how his story-scheduling changes from one book to the next, and also how, very occasionally, a whole planned out plot will just appear in his head. His solo work includes the bestselling 'The Magpies', 'Because She Loves Me' and 'Follow You Home'.Also, we get 10 top writing tips from some of the 10 greatest writers in history.writersroutine.com@writerspodwritersroutine@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ruth Rendell is known as a crime novelist, but in A Sight for Sore Eyes she stretches the genre's trappings into a taut and thrilling class-infused generational novel. Join Chris and Sarah as they get sucked into Rendell's bleak but utterly captivating world.

Mark Edwards writes psychological thrillers in which scary things happen to ordinary people and is inspired by writers such as Stephen King, Ira Levin, Ruth Rendell and Linwood Barclay. His first solo novel, The Magpies reached the No.1 spot on Amazon UK and has sold 300,000 copies to date. This was followed by What You Wish For (2014), Because She Loves Me (2014; also a No.1 bestseller in the UK) and Follow You Home (2015). Mark started writing in his twenties while working in a number of dead-end jobs. He lived in Tokyo for a year before returning to the UK and starting a career in marketing - he now writes full-time. Find Out More: Mark's Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Edwards/e/B004PP3WV0 Mark's website: http://www.markedwardsauthor.com/ Louise Voss & Mark Edwards: http://vossandedwards.com/ Mark Edwards on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5267328.Mark_Edwards Follow Mark on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mredwards Mark Edwards & Louise Voss on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vossandedwards/ Mark Edwards on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markedwardsbooks/ Mark Edwards in The Guardian - Trad vs Self-Publishing: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/25/self-publishing-mark-edwards

Mark Edwards writes psychological thrillers in which scary things happen to ordinary people and is inspired by writers such as Stephen King, Ira Levin, Ruth Rendell and Linwood Barclay. His first solo novel, The Magpies reached the No.1 spot on Amazon UK and has sold 300,000 copies to date. This was followed by What You Wish For (2014), Because She Loves Me (2014; also a No.1 bestseller in the UK) and Follow You Home (2015). Mark started writing in his twenties while working in a number of dead-end jobs. He lived in Tokyo for a year before returning to the UK and starting a career in marketing - he now writes full-time. Find Out More: Mark's Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Edwards/e/B004PP3WV0 Mark's website: http://www.markedwardsauthor.com/ Louise Voss & Mark Edwards: http://vossandedwards.com/ Mark Edwards on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5267328.Mark_Edwards Follow Mark on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mredwards Mark Edwards & Louise Voss on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vossandedwards/ Mark Edwards on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markedwardsbooks/ Mark Edwards in The Guardian - Trad vs Self-Publishing: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/25/self-publishing-mark-edwards --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/self-publishing-journeys/message

Red reviews one of his favourite Ruth Rendell novels and Robert Kirkwood digs a little deeper into her reasons for writing some of her books as Barbara Vine

We will be discussing The Tree Of Hands by Ruth Rendell. You can find it on the BARD site by searching for DB 23707. You can find it on Bookshare at:

Book Talk Begins at 30:15 Recorded on August 5, 2016 Our Mother Bear KAL/CAL is ongoing!  You have until August 31st to post a picture of any bear you have knit or crocheted in 2016 in our FO thread.  Lots of prizes, but your best reward is knowing you have given a child comfort. Thank you to new prize donors:  DCAlaneKnits, redsknits, BostonJen, tmkr, and dptemple. Our annual fall Sweater KAL will run from October 1 to January 31.  All entries to our FOs thread will need to be an adult-size sweater with sleeves (short is okay!), cardigan or pullover.  Challenge yourself!  Soon we will start a chatter thread, and create a Ravelry Bundle of patters. Knit Companion for Android is coming soon!  Please go to Knit Companion for Android thread to find out all about it - and to join in the fun with weekly puzzles/games.  Anyone can play - both IOS and Android users.   EVENTS: Lambtown at the Dixon Fairgrounds, Dixon, CA is October 1 & 2, 2017.  Tracie will be attending. Cogknitive Fiber Retreat in Tehachapi, CA on OctoberOctober 8th.  Both Barb and Tracie will be attending. KNITTING Tracie has finished: * Mother Bears #88 - 94 * Rodeo Drive Poncho by Staci Perry, using Fonty BB Merino in Brun Scooby Doo.   Barb has finished: * Her Added Elegance Socks by Mary Lukas, using Unwind Yarn Company Twinkle Sock in the Graffiti colorway *Christmas Vanilla socks using Wisdom Yarn Saki Bamboo Multis in the Crayon Box colorway * Declan Hat by Samantha Kirby using Vanna's Choice in the Colonial Blue colorway *Hurricane Hat by Andrea Guldin in Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice Solids, Heathers and Twists   Tracie is currently knitting: *Meris cardigan by Elizabeth Doherty, using Serendipidye Kings Mountain Sock  *Just Autumn Cowl by Janina Bottger in Becoming Art Fingering * Allegra Cami by Svetlana Volkova, using Euro Baby Cotton  Barb is currently knitting: * Crackerjack Cowl by Stacey Simpson Duke, using 4 colors of Plymouth Yarn DK Merino Superwash * Molto Bella Shawl by Brenda Castiel, using NoCKRs yarn - Duren Dyeworks Luscious Fingering  * Whippet by Ankestrick, using Knit Picks Lindy Chain in the Blush colorway * Wingspan by Mayan Tri'Coterie Designs, using Crystal Palace Mini Mochi   READING Tracie has finished: *  Give a Boy a Gun: The True Story of Law and Disorder in the American West by Jack Olsen *  You Must Remember This Podcast by Karina Spencer - Charles Manson's Hollywood.  12 episodes, starting with episode 37. Barb has finished: *  Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell.  *  Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman *  Something Missing by Matthew DicksBear in the Back Seat I: *  Adventures of a Wildlife Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park by Carolyn Jourdon & Kim DeLozer *   Missoula: Rape and Justice in a College Town by Jon Krakauer Tracie is currently reading: * The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn Beer & Susan Dworkin * Vertical: The Follow-Up to Sideways by Rex Pickett Barb is currently reading: * Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland * Before the Fall by Noah Hawley  

John talks to TV, stage and movie actor DIANE KEEN. Whose regular series included Doctors, Ruth Rendell, Cuckoo Waltz, Foxy Lady and Sandbaggers.

Quantum Bioinformation, cannabinoids, Ruth Rendell, and crystal meth. Plus happy cells, online shopping, Dumfries, and LL Cool J. On all-new equipment, it’s Skeptics with a K.

Queen of crime Ruth Rendell tells Professor Anthony Clare why she's jaundiced about the idea of the 'happy family'. Ruth Rendell was born in 1930 and died in 2015. Psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare's in depth interviews with prominent people from different walks of life. Born in Dublin, author Anthony held a doctorate in medicine, a master's degree in philosophy and was a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. After becoming a regular on BBC Radio 4's Stop the Week in the 1980s, he became Britain's best-known psychiatrist and earned his own vehicle, In the Psychiatrist's Chair. Starting in 1982, this series ran until 2001 and also transferred to TV. Anthony Clare died suddenly in Paris aged 64 in 2007. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 1994.

Stunning sticky page markers, why journalists should care more about media business models, Ruth Rendell competition, Random House’s kid/teen writing comp, Screenwriter in Residence Tim Gooding, your readability score, protocol when following up with an editor on a commissioned piece, how to boost your author platform, and more! Read the show notes.  Connect with Valerie, Allison and listeners in the podcast community on Facebook Visit WritersCentre.com.au | AllisonTait.com | ValerieKhoo.com

Owen Sheers' novel I Saw A Man deals with loss, grief, guilt and attempted redemption Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa has directed Hamlet 8 times. His latest production is playing at The Barbican in London - how well does this 17th Century English play transfer to a setting in 19th Century Japan? Manchester has a brand new arts centre: Home. What will it add to to Manchester's vibrant arts scene? Francois Ozon's film The New Girlfriend is based on a Ruth Rendell novel. How does the cross-dressing of the main character - a young widower - affect his friends, male and female? Dan Snow presents Armada, 12 Days To Save England on BBC2; taking a fresh modern look at the great Elizabethan sea battle - the reasons as well as the results.

Things to know about getting an agent, how to use Twitter for your career, crime fiction writer Ruth Rendell passes away, how to do an offline book tour, the book 'There Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words' by Mitchell Symons, why you should write a blog post series, Writer in Residence Nicole Hayes, how to browse the web without embarrassment, landing corporate writing gigs, and more! Read the show notes.  Connect with Valerie, Allison and listeners in the podcast community on Facebook Visit WritersCentre.com.au | AllisonTait.com | ValerieKhoo.com

Front Row pays tribute the writer PD James who has died aged 94. Fellow crime writer and friend Ruth Rendell reflects on James's life and work and, in a clip from our archive, James describes the four key motives for murder in a good crime story. Rugby player Gareth Thomas, footballer Bobby Moore and ice skater John Curry are among the subjects of the books shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, the longest-running prize for sports writing. At the awards ceremony, John Wilson talks to the seven shortlisted authors and speaks to the winner of the £26,000 prize. Maggi Hambling, who was the National Gallery's very first artist in residence in 1980, has returned to the gallery with "Walls of Water" a new exhibition of her paintings of the sea. She talks to John Wilson about painting raging storms, her tribute to Amy Winehouse and why, in her late sixties, she feels much younger than she used to. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Ellie Bury.

Highly acclaimed crime writer Ruth Rendell looks back over 50 years of Wexford. Recorded live at Bishopsgate Institute on Thursday 30 October 2014. If you enjoyed listening to this event do take a look at the other events we have coming up.

We will be discussing Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell. You can find it on the BARD site by searching for DB25021. This is also its RC number, and you can request it from your regional library on cassette

With Mark Lawson. This year the shelf of great American authors unexpectedly lengthened when a novel called Stoner by John Williams, forgotten since its first appearance five decades ago, was republished to widespread acclaim. At the same time two neglected novels by Renata Adler received enthusiastic reviews when brought back into print after thirty years and two little known writers, 89 year old James Salter and 76 year old Edith Pearlman, were hailed as newly discovered geniuses. Salter, Pearlman and Adler reflect on literary resurrection and Julian Barnes and Ruth Rendell discuss the comeback of Stoner. Producer: Ellie Bury.

Mark Lawson talks to Marin Alsop, the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms; writers Ruth Rendell and Jeanette Winterson discuss their friendship at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival; Philip French puts away his pen after being The Observer's film critic for 50 years; Scottish playwright and artist John Byrne talks about his new mural for the King's Theatre in Edinburgh; film director Nic Roeg looks back at his career, sex scenes and more in the light of his newly-published memoir; historian Simon Schama discusses the challenge of bringing his latest project The Story of the Jews to television; and Scottish band Franz Ferdinand are back with a new album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action.

With Mark Lawson, who reports from this year's Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Ruth Rendell and Jeanette Winterson discuss their friendship, which began when Winterson was a house-sitter for Rendell in 1986. The writers also discuss crime plots, exercise regimes and mammoth book signing sessions. Kate Atkinson turned to crime-writing with Case Histories, which has become a TV series with Jason Isaacs playing private investigator Jackson Brodie. Atkinson reveals her reluctance to call herself a crime-writer and why she often comes up with titles before stories. For the second year running Denise Mina received the Novel of the Year award. But there were times when she feared her winning book wouldn't be published. Mina discusses rewriting her book in a weekend. Val McDermid, Erin Kelly, David Mark, Steve Mosby and Nicci French - husband and wife duo Nicci Gerrard and Sean French - discuss debut writers and JK Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling, writers' block and tweeting, pure evil and taking inspiration from real life events. In front of an audience, Stuart MacBride, Catriona McPherson, Manda Scott and Cathi Unsworth reflect on how crime novels of the future could change, in the light of new technology and online developments. Producer Claire Bartleet.

Crime writer Ruth Rendell talks to Mark Lawson about her distinguished career; from the Edinburgh Festival comedian Reginald D Hunter explains how to upset the English and writer-performer Sarah Louise Young performs the story of Dame Julie Andrews; poet John Agard discusses the importance of learning verse by heart with Mark; and John Wilson meets The Clash and actor-rapper Riz Ahmed and examines the work of Edinburgh born artist Peter Doig.

With Mark Lawson. Ruth Rendell won the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award last month. She speaks to Mark about writing sixty novels in fifty years, how she's managing Inspector Wexford's retirement, her friendship with PD James and her second career as a Life Peer in the House of Lords. Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg star as two undercover agents attempting to infiltrate a drugs cartel by posing as criminals - but neither are aware of the others true identity. Directed by Icelandic film and theatre director Baltasar Kormákur, the film is based on a graphic novel series. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews. The recession has so far been fertile ground for TV producers and this week sees the beginning of two new series looking at work, and lack of it, in Britain. The writer Tony Parsons and historian Kathryn Hughes review Benefits Britain 1949 on Channel 4 and Paul O'Grady's Working Britain on BBC One. Theatre director Michael Grandage offers his choice for the Cultural Exchange. Producer Stephen Hughes.

With Mark Lawson. Steve Coogan returns as his best-known character, Norwich radio DJ Alan Partridge, in a new film Alpha Papa, which sees Partridge involved in an unusual hostage situation at a local radio station. Steve Coogan discusses the evolution of the character from the small to the big screen, the pressure from fans to reprise his 'hit' character, and how his fears of turning into Alan Partridge himself inspire his performances. For Cultural Exchange, crime writer Ruth Rendell discusses her choice of Handel's oratorio Solomon, based on the bible story and containing the sinfonia The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. On the day that Arts Council England announces investment plans for 2015 to 2018, Peter Bazalgette, its chairman, talks to Mark about what these plans will involve - in the light of cuts to local authority budgets. Producer Claire Bartleet.

Ruth Rendell chooses the oratorio Solomon by Handel. Plus archive interviews about Handel with conductors Christopher Hogwood John Eliot Gardiner.

Ruth Rendell doesn't believe in ghosts, of course, but MR James's stories, like ‘Canon Alberic's Scrapbook', frighten her nonetheless

Ruth Rendell doesn't believe in ghosts, of course, but MR James's stories, like ‘Canon Alberic's Scrapbook', frighten her nonetheless

"Oh, I could kill him."

Crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell talks to Ruth Rendell about "Vault", her 23rd Inspector Wexford novel. They are joined by Newcastle born writer Martyn Waites to discuss how writers write the city in their books. And critic Michael Carlson profiles Ira Levin author of Rosemary's Baby,The Stepford Wives, A Kiss Before Dying and The Boys From Brazil.

Popular British crime writer Ruth Rendell talked to the programme about her work, including that written under her pseudonym Barbara Vine. Ruth Rendell died in May 2015. (Photo: Ruth Rendell) (Credit:Seth Wenig/Reuters)

Barbara Vine, otherwise known as Ruth Rendell, meets James Naughtie and a small audience at a Readers' Day in Scunthorpe to talk about her haunting novel A Dark Adapted Eye.