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Top 10 Crime Shows
“I’ve never made it all the way through an Inspector Morse. Everyone who loves The Wire is lying. A Touch of Frost is part of a plot to destroy humanity’s will to live. Jonathan Creek went steadily downhill after Caroline Quentin left. The writers on The Mentalist are all fat and ride a golf cart…
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The Random Page
When The Kingdom of Bones first came out in hardcover, I was invited to blog about it for The Page 69 Test. This was the result… As a teenager I had a fascination with old-time Penny Dreadfuls and turn-of-the-century thrill fiction. Tom Sayers was a leading character in one of those old story papers, The…
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Silent Witness Season 16
I’ll have some more information on upcoming stuff, including UK and US publication dates for The Bedlam Detective paperback editions, in a few days’ time. For now here’s the BBC’s publicity still for Season 16 of Silent Witness, for which I’ve written a two-hour story. The season begins this Thursday and if the shot puts…
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Litro
Just before the holidays I did a Q&A for Litro, the London-based print and online literary magazine. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? Why? The ability to delete selected unpleasant memories. Which would be a whole can of worms because we’re the products of all our experiences, good and bad. Lots of…
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Bedlam Detective UK cover
It’s been sighted… Available for pre-order here.
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Is it just me or…
Is there an FX house that specialises in totally unconvincing CG cityscapes for period movies? Because they seem to be getting a lot of work this year.
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New Sebastian Becker Story
As part of the runup to Christmas, I’ve written a new short story for Random House’s Dead Good Books site. Set in the Bethlem Royal Hospital in 1912, the action takes place in the period between The Kingdom of Bones and The Bedlam Detective. If you’re a new reader it’ll serve as a brief introduction…
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On Being a Pro
As an early-career writer you work about 90% from the heart and about 10% from the head. Stuff pours out of you. You can lose track of time while you’re working. Everything’s inspiration and there’s little in the way of calculation. I’ve heard writers claiming that they go into a trance-like state when they work…
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From the Archive
The Stephen Laws archive, that is, or more correctly it’s lifted from his Facebook page. No, it’s not horror fiction’s very own Boy Band. That’s the late and much-loved Charles L Grant, me with Paul McCartney’s hair, Laws, and Bigdog himself Joe R Lansdale at the BFS Awards. Laws is a notorious pickpocket, which is…
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Dead Static
If you’re in London, from now until Saturday night you can catch the second run of the science fiction comedy Dead Static at the Hen and Chickens theatre in Islington. Tickets are nine quid. I believe there are still comps available for bona fide reviewers (ie, if you can prove you are one, and not…