THE JOURNEY OF A BOOK : STEF BIERWERTH (publisher - Quercus), BETHAN FERGUSON (Head of Customer Insight - Hachette) & DAVID HEADLEY (agent, bookseller, festival organiser et al) discuss the journey of a book from submitted manuscript to positioning on the bookshop shelf. Why a great book may just not be right for the market and how much book covers matter to sales. VICTORIA SELMAN Sunday Times Bestselling Author of Truly Darkly Deeply Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS Website for n...
Jul 12, 2022•32 min
MARK OLSHAKER (MINDHUNTER) chats to Victoria about TRULY, DARKLY, DEEPLY , serial killers and profiling the criminal mind. Mark Olshaker (born February 28, 1951) is an American author from Washington DC who frequently collaborates with FBI agent John E Douglas in writing books about criminal and investigative psychology. In 1995, they formed Mindhunters Inc. and later released MIndhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit, which was made into a Netflix series Mindhunter in 2017. VICTORIA ...
Jul 07, 2022•27 min
Sunday Times Bestselling author and Richard & Judy pick VICTORIA SELMAN chats to Paul Burke about her new psychological thriller TRULY, DARKLY, DEEPLY , ( UK link ), serial killers and their families, Mindhunter and losing a beloved pet. TRULY, DARKLY, DEEPLY (US link) Twelve-year-old Sophie and her mother, Amelia-Rose, move to London from Massachusetts where they meet the charismatic Matty Melgren, who quickly becomes an intrinsic part of their lives. But as the relationship between the two...
Jul 04, 2022•59 min
Jack Lutz chats to Paul Burke about his new novel LONDON IN BLACK , dystopian murder mysteries, London's past, thriller pace, Cleopatra's Needle and a guest appearance by Jack's Mum's cat. LONDON IN BLACK : THE ATTACKS WON’T STOP. NEITHER WILL SHE. LONDON 2027 Terrorists deploy London Black, a highly sophisticated nerve gas, at Waterloo Station. For ten percent of the population - the ‘Vulnerables’ - exposure means near-certain death. Only a lucky few survive. LONDON 2029 Copy-cat strikes plague...
Jul 01, 2022•45 min
Police Advisors : Kate Bendelow - THE REAL CSI (Fact) DEFINITELY DEAD (Fict.) & Graham Bartlett - BAD FOR GOOD (Fict) discuss weaving authenticity into crime fiction and common mistakes writers make. Kate Bendelow has been a serving Crime Scene Investigator with Greater Manchester Police for fifteen years, during which time she has worked on countless crime scenes ranging from burglary and armed robbery, to rape, arson and murder. Kate also delivers lectures to writers seeking inside knowled...
Jun 28, 2022•40 min
Canadian author LAURIE PETROU chats to Paul Burke about her new novel STARGAZER , Toxic Friendships, the limits of art and canoes. STARGAZER Diana Martin has lived her life in the shadow of her sadistic older brother. She quietly watches the family next door, enthralled by celebrity fashion designer Marianne Taylor and her feted daughter, Aurelle. She wishes she were a 'Taylor girl'. By the summer of 1995, the two girls are at university together, bonded by a mutual desire to escape their wealth...
Jun 24, 2022•50 min
ALAN PARKS chats to Paul Burke about his new novel May God Forgive , winning an Edgar, Glasgow and boredom in the music business. MAY GOD FORGIVE Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser's has left five dead. Tempers are frayed and sentiments running high. When three youths are charged the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck, and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The ...
Jun 21, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (NIGHT SHADOWS) & Will Dean (BAD APPLES) discuss Nordic Noir with Victoria, it's appeal, landscape as a character and the psychological element of Scandinavian fiction. Expect chills... VICTORIA SELMAN Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS Website for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.com Twitter: @VictoriaSelman We love to hear from our listeners! Find me on Twitter @VictoriaSelman and join in the chat using #OnTheSofaWithVictoria. Produced by Ju...
Jun 14, 2022•31 min
The Review Show Addendum - Salving my conscience for a few print reviews on books I never got round to when I read them. Brief comments on some of the great crime novels of late 2021 early 22. Reviews The Dark Flood Deon Meyer trans. KL Seegers Lemon Kwon Yeo-sun trans. Janet Hong I Am the Tiger John Arvide Lindquist trans. Marlaine Delargy Night Hunters Oliver Bottini trans. Jamie Bulloch Rizzio Denise Mina The Stoning Peter Papathanasiou The Commandments Óskar Guðmundsson trans. Quentin Bates ...
Jun 12, 2022•9 min
Paul Burke reviews May's new crime fiction releases: Click the relevant link to order the book of your choice through Bookshop.org THE ISLAND Adrian McKinty TO KILL A TROUBADOUR Martin Walker THE COMPANION Lesley Thomson THE DARK TIDE Simon McCleave KILLING ME SOFTLY Guy Hale DO NO HARM Jack Jordan THE SANCTUARY Andrew Hunter Murray LACUNA Fiona Snyckers MARINA BAY SINS , RICH KILL, POOR KILL, & BLOODY FOREIGNERS Neil Humphreys THE PHARMACIST Rachelle Atalla UNTIL I FIND YOU Anna Smith THE F...
Jun 08, 2022•23 min
Debut author Tom Watson chats to Paul Burke about his dystopian thriller METRONOME , 1984, featuring on BBC2 BETWEEN THE COVERS, hiking in the Peak District and Sheep. METRONOME Not all that is hidden is lost. For twelve years Aina and Whitney have been in exile on an island for a crime they committed together, tethered to a croft by pills they must take for survival every eight hours. They've kept busy - Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps - but som...
Jun 06, 2022•48 min
JOACHIM B SCHMIDT chats to Paul Burke about his new novel KALMANN , set in Iceland, translated from the German by Jamie Lee Searle. KALMANN is the self-appointed Sheriff of Raufarhöfn. Day by day, he treks the wide plains which surround the almost deserted village, hunts Arctic foxes and lays bait in the sea ― to catch the gigantic Greenland sharks he turns into the Icelandic fermented delicacy, hákarl. There is nothing anyone need worry about. Kalmann has everything under control. Inside his he...
Jun 03, 2022•50 min
HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION: Laura Shepherd-Robinson (DAUGHTERS OF NIGHT) & Abir Mukherjee (THE SHADOWS OF MEN) discuss tackling research, brining a period to life, and escaping with awards through the Calcutta sewage system. VICTORIA SELMAN Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS Website for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.com Twitter: @VictoriaSelman We love to hear from our listeners! Find me on Twitter @VictoriaSelman and join in the chat using #OnTheSofaWithVictoria...
May 31, 2022•38 min
KATHY WANG chats to Paul Burke about her spy thriller IMPOSTER SYNDROME , Silicon Valley, perceptions of women in power, satire and writing a good villain. IMPOSTER SYNDROME : Julia Lerner is one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley and an icon to professional women across the country. She is the COO of Tangerine, one of America's biggest technology companies. She is also a Russian spy. Julia has been carefully groomed to reach the upper echelons of the company and use Tangerine's softw...
May 29, 2022•40 min
This HEADS TOGETHER SPECIAL features chat about the 15th CrimeFest held in Bristol recently - boy was it good to get back to meeting people again and discussing crime fiction. Naturally, we haven't forgotten the round up of books to look out for and our podcast updates but mostly this is a celebration of CRIMEFEST , a triumphant return after two years away. Guests/presenters on the show: Donna Moore CrimeFest organiser, Ayo Onatade Shotsblog/critic, Victoria Selman author, Barry Forshaw FT criti...
May 27, 2022•53 min
CLAIRE MCGOWAN chats to Paul Burke about her account of 8 missing women in Ireland who disappeared between 1993-98. THE VANISHING TRIANGLE speaks to the tragedy and lasting trauma of their cases but also how much these disappearance/murders reflect on society. Some of these women were probably murdered by people they knew but was there also a serial killer operating at the time? THE VANISHING TRIANGLE Ireland in the 1990s seemed a safe place for women. With the news dominated by the Troubles, it...
May 25, 2022•49 min
POLICE PROCEDURALS (COP THRILLERS) . Caz Frear (SWEET LITTLE LIES) and William Shaw (DS CUPIDI and BREEN & TOZER) discuss procedurals, the rise of the armchair detective and riding in Peter James' police car. VICTORIA SELMAN Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS Website for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.com Twitter: @VictoriaSelman We love to hear from our listeners! Find me on Twitter @VictoriaSelman and join in the chat using #OnTheSofaWithVictoria. Produced by ...
May 16, 2022•47 min
NICOLA UPSON chats to Paul Burke about DEAR LITTLE CORPSES , Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, WWII, Golden Age crime, the Hitchcocks and Gielguds, not so cosy emotions and the fun of writing. DEAR LITTLE CORPSES : It takes a village to bury a child. 1 September, 1939. As the mass evacuation takes place across Britain, thousands of children leave London for the countryside, but when a little girl vanishes without trace, the reality of separation becomes more desperate and more deadly for those w...
May 13, 2022•58 min
JAMES WOLFF chats to Paul Burke about his two novels BESIDE THE SYRIAN SEA & HOW TO BETRAY YOUR COUNTRY , frequencies of conflict, spies are real people and what makes a literary spy novel. BESIDE THE SYRIAN SEA : Jonas works for the UK secret service as an intelligence analyst. When his father is kidnapped and held for ransom by ISIS gunmen in Syria, he takes matters into his own hands and begins to steal the only currency he has access to: secret government intelligence. He heads to Beirut...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 3 min
CHRIS RICKABY & BARNEY THOMPSON, aka BEN CREED chat to Paul Burke about A TRAITOR'S HEART their new historical thriller featuring post WWII Leningrad and detective Revol Rossel. A TRAITOR'S HEART Winter, 1952: Leningrad's icy streets are haunted by a murderer. The name is whispered everywhere – Koshchei has returned , the people say, Koshchei the Immortal . Koshchei, named after a sinister figure from Slavic folklore, is an invisible killer who cuts out the tongue of his victims and replaces...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 7 min
THRILLERS: SHARI LAPENA (NOT A HAPPY FAMILY) & GYTHA LODGE (LIE BESIDE ME) discuss THRILLER WRITING on The Sofa With Victoria. What makes a good thriller, raising the stakes and building suspense. VICTORIA SELMAN Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS Website for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.com Twitter: @VictoriaSelman We love to hear from our listeners! Find me on Twitter @VictoriaSelman and join in the chat using #OnTheSofaWithVictoria. Produced by Junkyard Dog...
May 02, 2022•42 min
JOSEPH KNOX chats to Paul Burke about his novel TRUE CRIME STORY , male violence and misogyny, the pitfalls of making yourself a malign presence in your own fiction and insomnia. TRUE CRIME STORY In the early hours of Saturday 17 December 2011, Zoe Nolan, a nineteen-year-old Manchester University student, walked out of a party taking place in the shared accommodation where she had been living for three months. She was never seen again. Seven years after her disappearance, struggling writer Evely...
May 01, 2022•1 hr 12 min
In 2 separate interviews authors Heather Young THE DISTANT DEAD and Peter Murphy TO BECOME AN OUTLAW discuss their new novels. Heather Young is author of two novels, The Lost Girls and THE DISTANT DEAD (EDGAR NOMINATED). Heather lives with her family in Mill Valley, California. THE DISTANT DEAD: A body burns in the desert... Does the boy who found it know more than it seems? Sal Prentiss, orphaned and burdened with a terrible secret, just wants a place to belong. Sal lives with his uncles on a d...
Apr 29, 2022•58 min
DON WINSLOW chats to Paul Burke about his new novel CITY ON FIRE , Rhode Island, the Iliad, Helen of Troy, borders, gangsters, Africa, Jane Austen and getting set up by Ken Bruen. CITY ON FIRE : Providence, RI, 1986. Twenty-nine-year-old Danny Ryan is a hard-working longshoreman, loving husband, loyal friend, and occasional “muscle” for the Irish crime syndicate that oversees much of the city. He yearns for something more and dreams of starting over fresh, someplace far away. But when a modern-d...
Apr 26, 2022•1 hr 11 min
ALIS HAWKINS (Not One of Us), GAIL 'GB' WILLIAMS (The Chair) & PHILIP GWYNNE JONES (Vengeance in Venice) chat to Victoria and Paul about all things Welsh crime fiction and the Gwyl Crime Cyrmu Festival - 27-29th April & 2-4th May. Featuring: The Daniel Morgan murder, Mark Billingham, Ann Cleave, Mark Ellis, Elly Griffiths, Cathy Ace, Vaseem Khan, Abir Mukherjee, Chris Lloyd, Matt Johnson and many more... For festival tickets: GWYL CRIME CYMRU https://gwylcrimecymrufestival.co.uk/ For inf...
Apr 24, 2022•51 min
AUSTRALIAN CRIME FICTION : CHRIS HAMMER (SCRUBLANDS & OPAL COUNTRY) & EMMA VISKIC (THOSE WHO PERISH out April - CALEB ZELIC SERIES) discuss the appeal of Outback Noir, aka Southern Cross Crime, aka Dingo Noir On The Sofa With Victoria. VICTORIA SELMAN Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS Website for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.com Twitter: @VictoriaSelman We love to hear from our listeners! Find me on Twitter @VictoriaSelman and join in the chat using #OnTh...
Apr 18, 2022•42 min
Part 2 - The Golden Decade . GETTING CARTER author NICK TRIPLOW chats to Paul Burke about Ted Lewis and Brit Noir as No Exit Press reissue 2 of his classic novels Jack Carter's Law and Billy Rags . In this second part we discuss the novels of Ted Lewis from Plender to GBH, the film Yellow Submarine, tv cop show Z Cars and Mary Whitehouse. NICK TRIPLOW GETTING CARTER : Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir is a meticulously researched and riveting account of the career of a doomed genius. Long-tim...
Apr 13, 2022•51 min
Part 1 - GETTING CARTER . Author NICK TRIPLOW chats to Paul Burke about Ted Lewis and Brit Noir as No Exit Press reissue 2 Lewis novels Jack Carter's Law and Billy Rags , ( Plender & GBH came out last year). In this first part Nick talks about his biography of Lewis, the author's background, influences and debut crime novel Jack's Return Home, filmed as Get Carter. GETTING CARTER : The story of Ted Lewis carries historical and cultural resonances for our own troubled times Get Carter are two...
Apr 12, 2022•43 min
TIMOTHY J LOCKHART chats to Paul Burke about UNLUCKY MONEY , Norfolk Virginia, hardboiled crime and Brit Grit. UNLUCKY MONEY When Chinese American private-eye Wendy Lu takes on her first murder case, she doesn’t realize how dangerous it’s going to be. Probing into the murder of Susan Fontaine, the wife of her client, wealthy real-estate developer Whit Fontaine—the primary suspect in the case—Wendy fights to prove he was framed. Wendy used to be a cop but quit after a rookie mistake caused the de...
Apr 08, 2022•55 min
HIGH CONCEPT - PSYCHE SUSPENSE PART 2 Sophie Hannah (The Couple at the Table), Gillian McAllister (Wrong Place, Wrong Time) and JP Delaney (The Girl Before) discuss high concept thrillers with Victoria Selman. What is high concept and why are we so gripped by the premise of some novels? The difference between high concept and big concept. VICTORIA SELMAN Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS Website for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.com Twitter: @VictoriaSelman We lov...
Apr 04, 2022•43 min
