WITH DARREN TANNER Usual suspects This month, DARREN TANNER is in a criminal frame of mind . . .

’ve got crime on my mind this by Raymond Chandler until writer and Conan Doyle’s creation of the brilliant but month. For the fi rst time, Foyles director spectacularly fell out over how best fl awed just a couple of is the offi cial bookseller at to interpret the ; an artistic confl ict decades earlier. CrimeFest, an annual international which has been dramatised in a wonderful This year’s CrimeFest line-up is crime-writing convention held radio play, Strangers on a Film, starring testament to the vitality of contemporary rightI here in Bristol, and I’ve spent the Patrick Stewart and Clive Swift. crime writing in this country, with some last few weeks poring over lists of the best Chandler’s own The Big Sleep, published truly talented British authors featuring and authors in the genre to make in 1939 and a classic of the over the festival, from Ben Aaronovitch to sure we’re well-prepared. crime oeuvre (yes, there are genres Sophie Hannah. So many authors have captured the within genres here), is a taut and brilliant Aaronovitch in particular has carved his public’s imagination since the novel featuring own niche of fantasy crime; fans will no genre’s roots in the early 19th century – Philip Marlowe, which layers complexity doubt be champing at the bit to read the certainly too many to mention here – but upon complexity as characters double- next instalment in his Rivers of here’s a whistle-stop through some of my cross other characters and secret upon series, published this autumn, but in the favourites. secret is revealed to the intrigued reader. meantime, last year’s Broken Homes is out A series that I’m particularly fond of right Marlowe is a great early example of the this month in , with the usual now is the new of re-translated cynical who defi nes the pulp blend of work and magic – perfect and re-jacketed Maigret crime genres. Fans of contemporary crime summer reading. by Georges Simenon. Penguin are, rather will recognise many hardboiled traits in Finally, I couldn’t leave you without ambitiously, a new every characters such as Mark Billingham’s Tom mentioning one British crime writer who month, and with 75 in the series in total, Thorne, whose latest outing in The Bones is particularly close to our hearts here it’s very much a long-term project, but one Beneath sees him pitted against the most at Foyles; a former colleague of ours, which has been eagerly awaited by fans of dangerous psychopath that he has ever put Sarah Hilary published her debut novel the pipe-smoking French . away, and is set against the backdrop of a Someone Else’s Skin earlier this year to wild and remote Welsh island. much critical acclaim, and I can vouch for THIS SIMENON REVIVAL is great it being a great read. If you visit us this news for European crime, but many iconic BILLINGHAM, PERHAPS ONE of the May, you’ll fi nd this and plenty of other classics, especially those adapted for the UK’s most successful crime writers, is fantastic crime novels to explore, whether big screen, have come from America. in good home-grown company. An early you’re a newcomer to the genre or a Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith favourite of mine by a British author is The seasoned fan. CL follows the predicament of Guy Haines, Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton, an architect whose wish to divorce his a 1908 metaphysical thriller with a mind- • Crimefest takes place at the Marriott unfaithful wife leads him to become blowing and surreal twist at the end. Hotel 15-8 May (crimefest.com) embroiled in a deadly situation beyond his It continued the move away from the •Foyles Bookshop, Philadelphia Street, control. The screenplay for Hitchcock’s ‘’ detective of 19th-century crime Quakers Friars, Cabot Circus renowned re-imagining was adapted writing which was instigated by Arthur foyles.co.uk

www.mediaclash.co.uk Clifton Life 39