Tuesday, December 05, 2017

What is A. J. Cross reading?

Featured at Writers Read: A. J. Cross, author of Something Evil Comes.

Her entry begins:
Crime fiction has been one of my joys over many years. However, since I began writing it myself I read much less of it. The reason? I appear to have acquired a possibly irrational fear that I might subconsciously purloin another author’s plot, theme or twist as my own. Consequently, I tend to read biographies or, in this case a diary: Alan Bennett’s Keeping On Keeping On. It is very heavy but only in terms of its seven hundred-plus pages. It is exactly what one might expect of Bennett but there’s another aspect which I found completely unexpected.

What was anticipated of course  was the humour: consider this, the single entry for 18th October, 2005 where Bennett quotes a critic remarking that  he can have too much of Alan Bennett to which Bennett adds: ‘I wonder how he thinks I feel.’ Economical, modest and understated. I’m willing to bet that response wasn’t worked for but arrived as quick, clean truth. There’s a precision about his observations of people, creatures and things which is a delight. He describes the inside of a bean pod, ‘shaped to the bean and furred like the inside of a violin case.’ It’s not necessary to have seen the pod. Thanks to Bennett, we know it. We can picture it.

Despite his enormous success as a playwright and commentator on ‘ordinary’ people’s lives, the diary describes Bennett’s...[read on]
About Something Evil Comes, from the publisher:
Dr Kate Hanson and the Unsolved Crime Unit are baffled as to motive when the body of a young man is discovered.

When a body of a young man is discovered locked inside a church crypt, his throat torn out, Kate Hanson and her cold case team are baffled as to motive. The evidence reveals careful planning but also loss of control. It makes no sense. Then Kate discovers that another young man is missing - and the case takes a disturbing twist.
Learn more about Something Evil Comes.

My Book, The Movie: Something Evil Comes.

The Page 69 Test: Something Evil Comes.

Writers Read: A. J. Cross.

--Marshal Zeringue