And The Winners Are...

I've been out all day so this is just a quick post to say that the winners of Al 'Sunshine' Guthrie's SLAMMER are:

Ann the Bookwitch
Vince Keenan

Copies will be winging their way to the lucky recipients forthwith.

J is for...

John Buchan - writer of over 100 books and about 100 million stories. As well as thrillers and adventure stories he also wrote historical novels and non fiction, including a textbook for accountants. His most famous novel is, of course, THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, which was written in 1914 and has never been out of print. It's the first of 5 novels to feature Richard Hannay and has been filmed 4 times - a Hitchcock version in 1935 (starring Robert Donat), 1959 (Kenneth More), 1978 (Robert Powell) and 2008 (Rupert Penry-Jones). My personal favourite of his books - my dad read them to me as bedtime stories when I was about 10 - was THE THREE HOSTAGES which featured the scary and mysterious Mr Medina.
"The plot of The Three Hostages is pure blood and thunder; it is a melodrama. It is, however, an exceptionally intelligent and well told melodrama, and the reader is effortlessly carried along." Grumpy Old Bookman in a great article about the book.

John Dodds - writer of crime, horror and fantasy fiction. His first novel, BONE MACHINES, is set in Glasgow and is available as a free download here. Here's the blurb. 'They suffer for his art. When a number of women are reported missing in Glasgow, the spectre of a previous spate of unsolved disappearances in the city rears its head. Journalist Ray Bissett is drawn into the case when his daughter joins the ranks of the missing. And ambitious police detective Tom Kendrick won’t let Ray forget a terrible incident form his past which resulted in the death of a young boy. Damaged lives and dark secrets… The streets of Glasgow haunted by the ghosts of the missing… and an artist driven by a deadly inspiration.'

Josephine Tey - born in 1896 and died in 1952, her real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh. She wrote 8 mystery novels, 6 of which featured Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant (although he was only the protagonist of 5 of them). The most famous of these is DAUGHTER OF TIME which has the protagonist passing time whilst laid up in hospital researching the murders of the Princes in the Tower. Writing as Gordon Daviot, Tey also wrote over 20 plays.
"Tey's style and her knack for creating bizarre characters are among the best in the field." - The New Yorker

Joyce Holms -Joyce Holms has written 9 books in a series featuring two Edinburgh lawyers - Fizz Fitzpatrick and Tam Buchanan. At the start of the series Fizz is a slightly wild and impetuous law student in her mid 20s and her friendship with the slightly staid and cautious middle-aged Tam is told with great humour. They investigate such varied crimes as the death of an Edinburgh drug baron (MR BIG), the kidnapping of a four year old boy (THIN ICE), and the death of an elderly German tourist (BAD VIBES). The series is witty and light but definitely not fluffy.
"The writing is deft and smooth, the characters well-drawn and Fizz and Tam are a couple worth keeping an eye on" - Donna Leon, Sunday Times

Julie Corbin - Julie Corbin's first novel, TELL ME NO SECRETS, was published in April this year. It's a psychological thriller set in a small Scottish fishing village, about a woman with a secret she has kept for the last 20 years but which she may not be able to keep secret for much longer. She says "The skeleton I fear isn't hiding in my closet. The one I fear lies underground. Her name was Rose and she was nine years old when she died." I have this one on Mt TBR and it looks interesting.
"This is Corbin's first novel and it's an absolute corker. She weaves this tale of tragedy and secrecy with flair and pulls you into Grace's distress with deft strokes.This book will creep under your skin and have you thinking about it in the small hours. You won't want to put it down." - News of the World.

A Quickie

A very short blog post today. And none tomorrow as I am off to T In The Park to see the Kings of Leon, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, The View and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. As well as enjoying the music, I will also be trying not to use the loo. I have an aversion to chemical toilets - even before they become totally minging (which is about ten seconds after they are first used). So no food or drink for 10 hours. How will I survive? Luckily, I am like a camel - not that I'm an ungulate, you understand, just that I have a goodly supply of fatty tissue that I could survive on for...oooooh...about a month.

Anyway, a couple of reviews from the website lovereading. The first for Denise Mina's STILL MIDNIGHT, featuring Glasgow cop DI Alex Morrow, and the second for Grant McKenzie's SWITCH, about a man who arrives home to find his home burned to the ground with his wife and daughter inside...or were they?

And finally, a reminder that I will be drawing the winners of Allan Guthrie's SLAMMER on Sunday, so if you want a copy please e-mail me at bigbeatfrombadsville at gmail dot com.

I Is For...

Iain McDowall - grew up in Scotland and now lives in the Midlands. He's the author of six books in a police procedural series featuring DCI Jacobson and DS Kerr of Crowby CID. He chooses as his themes issues affecting the UK today. In his own words:
"Crime fiction – mine included – exists primarily as an entertainment genre. But that shouldn’t mean that the reader has to check-in their brain or their interest in the real world at the door. My novels are designed to be ‘realist’ and thought-provoking as well as entertaining – and in most of them I’ve fictionalised crimes of the kind that really do happen in modern Britain. Race killings (Killing for England) and familicides (Perfectly Dead) for instance unfortunately come under that heading – and so do miscarriages of justice. So I’ve always had it in mind that one of the Jacobson/Kerr books would need to focus on that topic – and Envy The Dead has turned out to be that book."
"Scores on all fronts - good writing, good characters, solid plotting, highly readable and politically astute." Mat Coward, Morning Star, UK

Ian Pattison - the writer of the comedy TV series Rab C Nesbitt, as well as other TV series. He has written two novels, one featuring Rab C Nesbitt, and the other - SWEET AND TENDER HOOLIGAN - which features a criminal who lives in London and returns for the funeral of his mother. However, while he's been away he's written a tell-all exposé and some people aren't very happy.
"...a spectacular novel, prompting unease and admiration in almost equal measure... sort of American Psycho with a Paisley accent." Glasgow Herald

Ian Rankin - who I am certain needs no introduction! Apart from the Rebus series, 3 Jack Harvey novels and a couple of standalones, his new novel THE COMPLAINTS is due to be published in the first week of September. In Ian's own words from his newsletter:
"...the title is shorthand for Complaints and Conduct, this being the department that investigates misdemeanours within the police. My main character is a detective who spends his time rooting out bad cops. This makes him an unpopular figure within his own force. When he himself comes under investigation, there are plenty of people looking for payback. Is that whetting the appetite? The hero is in his early-forties and doesn’t drink. Yes, that’s right, he doesn’t drink. He really doesn’t. Not a drop. (The research, needless to say, was hell…)"
"Throughout the entire series, Rankin's strength has been his ability to get under the skin of Edinburgh's pyschogeography: he vividly describes 'a city...of banking and brothels, virtue and vitriol' where underworld meets overworld. Deftly plotted and awash with sarky one-liners Exit Music is no exception."- Metro

Irvine Welsh - another author who needs little introduction. Author of 7 novels and 4 short story collections, including the most recent - REHEATED CABBAGE - as well as theatre and film scripts. The synopsis of REHEATED CABBAGE is:
"Enjoy Christmas dinner with the Begbies, and see how warmly Franco greets his sister's boyfriend and news of their engagement. A televised Hibs-Hearts game means more to Malky than the life of his wife, while two guys fighting over a beautiful girl come to realise, after a few pills and pints, that their friendship is more important. In the novella I Am Miami, 'Juice' Terry Lawson meets his old nemesis, ritred schoolmaster Albert Black, under the strobe-lights of a Miami Beach nightclub."
"A snarling epic of a book...ugly, devastatingly funny, unremittingly nasty and pulls no punches...for my money, this is one of the best things Welsh has written to date and it's right up there with Trainspotting. Don't dare miss it." Kevin Williamson, The Scotsman (about FILTH)

I'm Celebrating With A Competition

Thanks to everyone for your e-mails and tweets and phone calls. I'm well chuffed that Busted Flush are going to publish OLD DOGS in the US. I shan't go on. David and Al already know how I feel :o) Suffice to say that I am very lucky and very happy.

Since I can't concentrate enough to do a proper post (mainly because I have to keep hugging myself and squealing every time I think about it), I thought I would do a wee competition.

I have 2 copies of Al Guthrie's SLAMMER to give away. Should you need any incentive, here's a great review from the eloquent Gerard Brennan at Crime Scene NI.

All you need to do to win a copy is e-mail me at bigbeatfrombadsville at gmail dot com and I will pull 2 names out of a hat. Well, I haven't got a hat. I'll pull them out of a shoe. I have lots of those.

No geographical restrictions and I will draw the winners at the weekend.

Thanks all,
Happy, happy Donna

Pocket Sized Books in a Pocket Sized Post

Peter Rozovsky at Detectives Beyond Borders reviews Allan Guthrie's KILLING MUM. The book is the latest in the Crime Express series from the lovely people at Five Leaves Publishing. What a good idea this is. A series of novellas costing £4.99 each (about the same as one of those crap celebrity magazines). Small, glossy and perfectly formed (and that's just Al Guthrie). Others in the series are Ray Banks' GUN, John Harvey's TROUBLE IN MIND, Stephen Booth's CLAWS, Clare Littleford's THE QUARRY, Rod Duncan's THE MENTALIST, Lawrence Block's SPEAKING OF LUST, and Nicola Monaghan's THE OKINAWA DRAGON. Great stuff.

More excellent little tales - further news on the Oxfam charity stories - Ox-Tales

An excellent interview with Tony Black on author Nick Stone's website.

Kate Atkinson appears at the Buxton Festival.

Alexander McCall Smith talks about the afterlife.

Thoughts From A Broad - Part Deux

It seems that whenever I go to San Francisco I leave something behind. Last time, it was underwear all over the luggage carousel, this time, it was my coat. And maybe I did also leave a little bit of my heart - it's a beautiful, slightly eccentric place that serves great food - how can you not love it?

Last time the disaster occured just as I arrived and was waiting for my luggage. As the suitcases went round, I was horrified to see that the stitiching had come away from around the edge of my suitcase and there was this gaping cavern with a pair of knickers sticking out of it. Yes indeed, the hole had developed in one of those little nooks and crannies of the suitcase where I had stuffed my underwear. This was a moment when I wished that I'd gone for the silk and lace g-strings rather than the comfy cotton Big Knickers which could comfortably house a family of hibernating bears. I feverishly scanned the carousel but luckily there were no offending items lurking ready to embarrass me.

I wondered idly whether my frillies were now gracing the tarmac at Glasgow, Amsterdam and San Francisco airports and hoped that this wouldn't cause an international incident when the pilot of a Boeing 747, 30,000 feet up, looked down and spotted an unconventional enormous pink landing field. I toyed briefly (for maybe, ooooh, half a nano-second) with the idea of going to lost luggage to see whether they had found any underwear, but the idea of them holding up a pair of knickers the size of Liechtenstein (which is not really that small a country) made me break out in a cold sweat.

"Please could you describe your underwear ma'am."

"Yes, well, it's ...ummmm....delicate flimsy and petite."

"Sorry ma'am we only have THESE, which look as though they were made for an overweight elephant."

"Oh, goodness me, no, they're definitely not mine."

This time I left my jacket in the shuttle bus on the way back to the airport. But I digress. Here are the edited highlights of our visit to San Francisco.

Our hotel was lovely. Unlike our compact, smart, bijou New York hotel, The Mayflower was bohemian, spacious and scruffy. We had a walk in wardrobe with a huge ungainly chest of drawers out of the 1950s, and big old-fashioned sash windows.


Everyone kept telling us that we had arrived during unusually glorious weather, and it was really hot and sunny, so we decided to be really touristy and do the open-topped bus thing, which turned out to be a great way to see the area. First of all was a trip across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. On the way, a stop at this magnificent building - the Palace of Fine Arts.

While Fisherman's Wharf is horrendously touristy and a bit tacky in places, the sea lions at Pier 39 were one of the highlights of the trip and we spent ages just watching their antics. From a distance they look like big brown sacks. From close up they look like big brown sacks too, until they move.

Then it was over to Alcatraz. As part of the trip you get a fascinating audio tour which takes an hour or so, telling all sorts of interesting stories about the former residents and their lives there. I was struck with how weird it must have been to have been a child of one of the guards and to have spent your childhood on this little island which is both magical and forbidding.
Also, how close it is to the city, and how tempting it must have been when you could see the big city so close and yet so far. Apparently, it was the only prison in the federal system at the time to have hot showers. "How forward thinking and kind." I thought. But no...it was just so that the prisoners didn't become acclimatised to cold water and try to swim across to freedom.

Our bus trips also took us through Chinatown, North Beach, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury. Our tour guide told us that there was a house they passed on this tour that always had a naked guy in the window. I got my camera at the ready. Sadly, he appeared to be taking the day off.
We also walked a lot, from Nob Hill to the Tenderloin (via the Tender Nob?), all around Union Square and Market Street, up those bloody great hills, and through Haight Ashbury. On Haight, I went into a shop to buy some jewellery and Ewan waited outside. He decided to sit down on the pavement as he was hot and tired and this guy came up to him "Hey buddy, you OK? Want some food?" "Do I look like a jakey*?" he said to me, half horrified, half proud, when I emerged from the shop. "Well, now you come to mention it..." We also went to Amoeba Records and spent about 5 hours in blissful browsing. I bought a Clash CD I thought I didn't have (but, of course, got it home to find out that I already have it), something by the wonderful Flaming Stars (not to be confused with the Flaming Lips and who are a great band to check out if you are a fan of noir - with tracks such as Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, Face on the Bar Room Floor, New Hope For The Dead, and You Don't Always Want What You Get), Apples In Stereo and The Hives.

One of the most...interesting parts of San Francisco is the Tenderloin. With its smoke shops, dive bars and...massage parlours ("With hot showers"!) and the gauntlet of sometimes quite aggressive homeless people, drug dealers, people peeing in bus shelters, people begging and people with serious mental health problems (I didn't think that the sight and sound of someone blowing a kiss at you could be quite so creepy), it can be a bit daunting. But it's also one of the most fun areas with great bars, restaurants and music venues. From the top notch Bourbon and Branch cocktail bar (of which more later) to the wonderfully grungy Hemlock Tavern with its friendly staff and great music ( plus the ladies restroom that only has a curtain to preserve your modesty and graffiti that is well worth the price of admission).

On the topic of people begging, we saw this guy outside Macys one day. He was standing like this for about 3 hours and I felt really bad for him. The next day, I felt better. As we walked through Union Square, the same guy, dressed in the same outfit, with the same stick and begging cup, bounded off the back of a van, waved cheerily to the driver and sauntered towards Macys. As he got closer his steps became slower, his back more hunched, his face more pained until, as he reached his favourite spot, he was hobbling painfully into position. Cheeky beggar.

The day we were leaving was the Gay Pride festival so there were all sorts of preparations going on for it, including some people with placards protesting against it "God Hates Dykes on Bikes" - we couldn't work out whether God's aversion was to lesbians or two wheeled forms of transport. One of the nutters with the placards called out to a pretty girl walking past eating an ice cream "You're lickin' that ice cream all sexy, like you want the boys to notice you. They're all watchin' you lickin' on that ice cream and wantin' you to lick on them." Errrrr, actually mate, I think that says more about you than the girl.


We ate and drank. A lot. Amongst many great meals we had lunch at John's Grill with the lovely Simon Wood and his even lovelier wife Julie. We ate Brazilian Italian at Mangarosa in North Beach with the charming David Corbett (may I recommend the Brazilian cheesebread and David's books - both of which are tasty, hot and melt in the mouth). And I had one of the best steaks I've ever had at The Daily Grill, in the splendid company of two of my favourite people - Eddie 'Czar of Noir' Muller and his wife Kathleen. I've been a big fan of Eddie's since I read his first book THE DISTANCE which is one of my top 5 books of all times and should be much better known than it is.

Eddie and Kath also accompanied us to Bourbon and Branch which is an old speakeasy. You have to give a password before they let you in, and then you're seated in a quiet booth and given an enormous cocktail menu. Well, I just had to try a few. "But don't worry," I said to my companions, "I won't be mixing my drinks - I'll stick to tequila." So I started off gently with the Ambajador - kaffir lime infused tequila, passionfruit nectar, fresh lime and simple syrup. Next was the O'Farrell Street Fizz. Oh. My. God. Bourbon, blackberry liqueur, Allspice dram (a type of rum), lemonjuice, eggwhite (well, they say you should always have something to eat while you're drinking) and soda. Then the Claremont Affair - pear infused rye whisky, Amaro Nonino (which is a type of grappa), simple syrup, grenadine and egg white. Finally, the Clover Club. It had gin in it. Frankly, I have no idea what else.

We finally staggered home through the Tenderloin at 2.30 am. Strangely enough, it didn't seem quite so scary. I would definitely recommend Bourbon and Branch. One word of warning though - I felt a bit ropey the next morning - I think it was all those egg whites - I must have a dairy allergy or something.

For our last evening Eddie and Kath invited us over. David Corbett and the delightful Cara Black were also there and we had great chat and loads of laughs. Eddie made us cocktails in the Tiki lounge (including one he'd invented especially), we had a barbecue that included the most delicious corn on the cob oever, and listened to the Pogues.

A perfect end to a perfect holiday.








*Scots for tramp/bum/homeless person