Blurb
‘They got the right matches. But did they get the right person?’
This summer Simon Booker is back. The prime-time TV murder mystery writer, with a voice that reads like ‘Val McDermid meets Stephen King’ (Hadley Freeman), returns withKill Me Twice, and we’d love for you to take part in the blog tour to launch this book.
Kill Me Twice finds investigative journalist Morgan Vine on the rise, her ‘one woman innocence project’ book become a bestseller, and she’s the go-to for everyone trying to overturn a wrongful conviction. But one of these cases catches her eye more than most…
Anjelica Fry is in prison for murdering her ex, Karl Savage, in an arson attack. Multiple forensic experts testified to finding his charred remains. Proving her innocence seems an impossible task. . It doesn’t matter that Karl was abusive. That Anjelica has a baby to care for. That she’s petrified of fire. The whole world knows Karl is dead.
Then he turns up outside Morgan’s window . . . A compulsively gripping thriller with a truly kick-ass female lead in Morgan Vine, Simon Booker turns up the heat in this follow up to his critically acclaimed debut Without Trace.
Sadly due to the sadness that has dominated this summer with both myself and my partner losing a parent in the space of two months, I haven’t managed to read Simon Booker’s second book featuring Morgan Vine yet but I do have a copy of Kill Me Twice sitting patiently on the bookshelf ready to read. This is a book I’m eager to get to after having enjoyed Without Trace so much and so I’m thrilled that Simon Booker has written a lovely post on the camaraderie in the crime writing community. This has just reaffirmed my vow that next summer I will manage to get to Theakston’s Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate!
The camaraderie of crime
Crime pays. Every crime writer knows that (although it’s true for some more than others.) But what every crime writer also knows is that we’re part of a writing community unlike any other. I’m writing this having just returned from the Theakston’s crime writing festival at Harrogate. Four days of panels, writers, readers, publishers, editors, publicists, bloggers and would-be writers, all spilling out of the Old Swan Hotel, onto the lawns, to gossip and chat, talk about books and catch up with old friends, as well as make new ones. I’ve been writing professionally for a bazillion years – TV drama, mainly, prime time murder mysteries for BBC and ITV, but now crime novels too – and I’ve never encountered such a mutually supportive group of creative people, all taking pleasure in each other’s company and sharing the rollercoaster ride of the publishing world. Of course there is a pecking order, and of course there are occasional squabbles and petty rivalries (and jealousy too – we’re only human FFS!) but there’s also a sense of camaraderie unrivalled in the world of books.
The cliché is that crime writers vent our everday frustrations on the page – killing off several people before breakfast – something that allows us to be ‘sunny’ in real life. Romance writers, meanwhile, are said to be filled with disappointment and disillusion, and not the kind of people you want to invite to the pub. As someone who has written rom-coms for US TV (one starring Anna Frield and Rob Lowe, and yes, his eyes really are that blue) I couldn’t possibly comment…
But I remember once attending a posh dinner of very grand Literary Types – more Booker winners than you could shake a stick at – and being painfully aware of how stilted the evening was, and of how everyone seemed to be trying to outfox and out-do each other, rather than enjoy each other’s company.
The same cannot be said of the crime-writing fraternity. Who’s that bloke in the silly hat, laughing with the woman in shorts? Oh, it’s Mark Billingham and Val McDermid. And that man over there, the one in shorts and shades, chatting with Ian Rankin? Oh, it’s Simon Kernick. I asked him if he’d like to read my new Morgan Vine thriller, KILL ME TWICE. He said yes, and a few weeks later offered a quote for the cover. ‘Simon Booker’s fast-paced, twisty thrillers are a must-read for anyone who loves a good page-turner’. Likewise Mark Billingham. ‘A cracking read.’ If that’s not solidarity – and generosity, and camaraderie – I don’t know what is.
If you’d like to read a FREE 25-page short story, in which Morgan Vine must outwit an escaped prisoner who takes her hostage in her isolated Dungeness shack, please go to simonbooker.com
