Yesterday I do be mentioning Arlene Hunt in dispatches from last weekend’s trip to New York, so I do (sorry, but we were in an Irish bar on Friday night, and it takes time for the pixie dust to wear off), and it’s fair to say that one of the highlights of the weekend was seeing Arlene’s latest tome, THE CHOSEN, in the flesh for the first time. A very handsome tome it is too, and nice to see a crime novel that opts for a white cover rather than the usual grim tones that tend to dominate designers’ palettes. It’s all the more impressive, methinks, when you consider that THE CHOSEN is Arlene’s first outing under her own aegis, as it were: after six well-received titles published with a traditional house, Arlene has taken publishing matters into her own hands, setting up Portnoy Publishing with her husband. I wish them a fair wind and calm seas as they set sail into the future …As for the novel itself, Mike Nicol over at the very fine Crime Beat blog is currently publishing extracts from a number of contemporary Irish crime novels, and Arlene’s contribution from THE CHOSEN can be found here. “A taut, sharp, gripping re-imagining of the serial-killer novel,” says Tana French, which is all kinds of nice.
Elsewhere, Crime Beat also features extracts from Alan Glynn’s latest, BLOODLAND; a snippet from Colin Bateman’s forthcoming tome NINE INCHES that begins - oh yes! - with, “It was a dark and stormy night …”; and my own humble tome, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which is currently sulking in a corner and wishing it had been written by Colin Bateman. Ungrateful buggers, my books …
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