Trick of the Dark

By Val McDermid

Dr Charlie Flint is a psychologist whose career is in tatters and who is under investigation by her professional body after her recommendation sets a killer free to go on and murder four women. She's asked by her former Oxford tutor Dr Corinna Newsome to look into the background of Jay Macallan Stewart, a celebrity memoirist and now lover of her daughter. Newsome's daughter, Magda, has had the unthinkable happen - her husband murdered at their wedding. Newsome can't reconcile herself with the fact her daughter has found solace in the arms of another woman, especially Jay Stewart, another former student.
As Charlie digs into jay's past she starts to find an alarming number of people who stand in Jay's way end up dead.

I thought this was a fabulous novel, beautifully written and full of strong women characters. It's a novel that keeps you guessing. Is Jay Stewart a psychopathic killer , or is she just unlucky and bad things happen to people around her? The story is told from different character's perspective and also from Jay's memoirs, one she is currently writing and one published which weaves throughout the novel, giving great insight into her character and the truths she's filtering and adding doubt and co ...more I thought this was a fabulous novel, beautifully written and full of strong women characters. It's a novel that keeps you guessing. Is Jay Stewart a psychopathic killer? Or is she just unlucky and bad things happen to people around her? The story is told from different character's perspective and also from Jay's memoirs, one she is currently writing and one published which weaves throughout the novel, giving great insight into her character and the truths she's filtering, and adding doubt and confusion for the reader.

It gives a fascinating insight into collegiate times in days gone by in Oxford, McDermid's old stomping ground, so she's gone back to her roots and had fun with it.

I'm a squeamish reader, so I loved that this novel doesn't have blood and gore, but it builds up tension beautifully and as all of the narrators are pretty unreliable and busy deceiving each other, it keeps you guessing. Great read.

RJ Ellory - Oh how the sparks flew...

Dunedin has had a veritable feast of visiting crime writers in recent weeks. Yesterday it was the turn of British crime writer RJ Ellory. Roger is a writer I've only recently become aware of with his novel A Simple Act of Violence winning the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel Award. He was in Dunedin promoting his novel Saints of New York.

A cosy crowd turned out to hear him talk at the Dunedin City Library, and I have to say it was a real treat to listen to him. Roger is a natural storyteller, and he held everyone captivated with his entertaining and generous answers to our questions. His story of how he came to be published was one of sheer exasperation and pig-headed determination. I think he wins the award for the most rejections received by an author, which means nowadays when he's making a living out of doing what he loves, he gets to have the last laugh. I think that is one of the main things I came away with from the night was his sheer passion and enjoyment of writing.

He said he writes about human drama, and wants his novels to resonate and stay with the reader well after they've finished. He wants his characters to be memorable, real. He certainly achieved that in Saints of New York, a novel I loved and haven't been able to get out of my head.

Naturally I had to get my shameless groupie shot with the author and my book autographed, but I also had the pleasure of getting to pre-record a radio interview with him for the Write On Radio Show. And that is where the sparks flew...

I bowled up to his hotel at 9.00am this morning, armed with Toroa Radio's mini-disc recorder (it's a high tech station, really!) I got it all set up at a table in a quiet corner of the hotel restaurant, Roger rocked up, looking very tolerant for someone who had to get up for an interview at 9.00am on a Saturday morning. I went to hit record...and nothing. Hmmm, it was working a few moments ago, but no, the display had disappeared, and for all intents and purposes the minidisc recorder appeared dead.

I pushed a few buttons;

Nothing.

I gave it a few cautious taps.

Nothing.

Minor humiliation and panic start to set in.

I gave it a hearty slap.

Still nothing.

Mr Ellory looked amused.

Then we started to smell the acrid tang of smoke.

Hmmmm.

I pick up the power transformer and watched in fascination as pretty electrical arcs spark across the exposed wires where they connected with the box.

At this point self-preservation set in and I pulled the plug out of the wall and looked nervously up at the sprinklers above the table. Thanks god the smoke detectors didn't go off.

Mr Ellory looked very amused at this point.

So alas, no interview. But I did get to have a lovely informal chat about the virtues of Facebook, among other things.

There you go. I now go down in history as the person who did her jolly best to electrocute RJ Ellory!

Write On Radio Show, Wednesday

What a crazy up and down week it has been. The Christchurch earthquake must have been terrifying to experience there, because the shaking was scary enough here in Dunedin! They have announced the cancellation of The Press Christchurch Writer's Festival, and with that, the announcement of the winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime fiction. The organiser is trying to figure out something special for that, so we'll keep you posted.

I'm bummed out that the festival is no longer to be, as I was so excited about it, but I am relieved not to be traveling to Christchurch when they are still getting aftershocks ranking in the 5's on the Richter scale.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is Write On Radio Show Day, which is live on Toroa 1575kHz AM radio in Dunedin at noon, or live streamed from the Toroa Radio website.

Scottish crime writer extraordinaire Val McDermid was recently in Dunedin and I had the pleasure of recording a radio interview with her, as well as doing a spot of socialising. In the interview we talk about her life as a crime writer, as well as her newly released novel Trick of the Dark.




Sue Wootton is best known as a poet and short story writer, but she has now added children's book writer to her list of achievements. We'll talk about her new children's picture book Cloudcatcher, and also her passion for poetry and short fiction.

Listen in!

Emerging for spring air...

Once again, I find myself apologising for being strangely silent on the blog front. So this is me waving my hand around saying hi guys, yes, I'm still alive.

So what's been going on...?

I've been busy putting the finishing touches on the post grad thesis, just about there, just waiting on the last bit of feedback. When it's handed in you'll hear the whoop and hollering of delight from your place!

I'm expecting the edits back on Bound from the publisher any day now. Any thoughts of a week or two off before they arrive has gone out the window!

Found out I'm not going to be the Robert Burns Fellow next year, damn it. Ah well, I'll just keep on applying...

Speaking of keeping on applying... applications for Creative New Zealand funding close on Friday.

I pre-recorded a telephone interview with Peter Robinson about his writing and his new book Bad Boy.

Next week I get to interview RJ Ellory.

I did book reviews for Jim Mora's Critical Mass programme on Radio New Zealand yesterday

The garden is blooming lovely - every spring flower you can imagine. This is the excitement of a new home - seeing what pops up in the garden.

My mum's come to stay on holiday!

And now I'm counting down to next Friday, and the Christchurch Writers Festival, and the announcement of the Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime fiction novel! In the meantime I've got to think about the really important questions of life, like what on earth am I going to wear!!!

Val McDermid hits Dunedin

On Friday I got to drag myself out of my study induced incarceration to make the most of crime writer extraordinaire Val McDermid's visit to Dunedin.

Thanks to fellow Dunedin crime writer Liam McIlvanney twisting her arm while at the Harrogate Festival, Val's NZ tour was extened to include the Edinburgh of the South. To us down here it seemed altogether logical that the Scottish writer should come here first!

A very appreciative crowd turned out on Friday evening to hear her talk at the Otago Settlers Museum, and she kept us thoroughly entertained with her stories about writing, her new novel Trick of the Dark, and some of her writerly processes, including testing characters by talking out loud with them while walking her dog along her neighbourhood beach. Luckily the locals have got used to it!

After the event I had the privilege of going out to dinner with Val, Liam McIlvanney and a few others to Dunedin's best Scottish bistro and Whisky Bar, Scotia. Scotia has over 300 whiskies to choose from if you fancy a dram. It was a very entertaining evening, and the meal was fantastic.

One of the highlights for me was the discussions about crime fiction and crime writers. Val McDermid is incredibly knowledgeable about writers, as is Liam, who is the Stuart Chair in Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, and one of the other guests who also lectures in crime fiction. I learned an awful lot and as a result will have to add a mountain of writers to my must read list. So a brilliant evening all around.

I also pre-recorded a radio interview with Val which will be broadcast on the Write On Radio Show on September the 8th - but I shall remind folk about that closer to the date.

It was one of those evenings that left me feeling invigorated and rearing to get stuck into writing the next novel...

There's always another deadline...

I apologise if I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front. I mean to, and I want to, but after a day hard out writing, I look at the screen and contemplate posting something witty and erudite, or informative and realise, oops, I seem to have used up my daily allocation of witty, erudite and informative and the well is dry.

Writing you ask? Is it the next novel? A short story for the Sunday Star Times competition? Nah, sorry, it's something quite different - I'm in the final throes of a thesis. Muggins here decided she needed to do some post-graduate study, that life wasn't busy enough with being a mum and writing novels and all the other associated stuff, nope, I thought I'd become a student again.

Oh you silly cow, you say, and you'd be right - the extra pressure has been hard, BUT it has been a lot of fun and a journey of discovery.

So what does a Crime Writer/ academic wannabe study then? For those out there that like official titles, I'm doing a Post Graduate Certificate in Pharmacy Research. But here is the fun bit - I'm researching a crime writer, and not just any crime writer, I'm researching Ngaio Marsh. What the hell does Ngaio Marsh have to do with Pharmacy research you ask? Well, she used the occasional poison, didn't she? Et voila, we have a connection.

So there is some method to my madness - I get to tick lots of boxes in one go. I get to look into the workings of a writer I hugely admire, I get to satisfy my inner geek and I get to look closely into the world of crime writing. It's all good.

But it does make me a bad blogger, just for a while.

Finalist!!!

The finalists have been announced for the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for the best crime novel... and Containment is one of them!

I'm utterly stoked. It feels such an honour to make the top three along with Cut & Run by Alix Bosco and Burial by Neil Cross.

The winner will be announced at The Press Christchurch Writer's Festival on Friday the 10th of September.

For this Ngaio Marsh fan to make it into the final of the Ngaio Marsh Award is just too exciting for words.