Bryant and May
‘It’s all stored away up here.’ Arthur Bryant tapped his temple. ‘My head’s like an attic full of ephemera, old record albums, paperbacks you can’t bear to throw out and those moulds dentists used to make of your teeth.’ May sighed and pulled his chair closer to his desk. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘do you want […]
Over the years I’ve come to think of the commenters on this site as friends and relatives, albeit quirky and occasionally annoying ones like your auntie who drank too much gin on Christmas Day and didn’t make it to the bathroom. I still miss Mike Cane, Dan Terrell, Anne Hill Fernie and many others. What […]
ARTHUR BRYANT: ‘I once considered having a tattoo on my right bicep but I couldn’t make up my mind between Sir Robert Peel or Diana Dors.’ There are two required traits for any career writer, originality and consistency (and patience. THREE things, originality, consistency, patience and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope – FOUR […]
The sun was starting to set here in Barcelona – it will set almost an hour earlier by the end of this month, but for now it’s still 27C outside, even though some Spaniards have decided it’s autumn and are wearing black, maroon and grey puffa-jackets. I put the wine in the fridge (Spanish wines […]
Monty Python understood a key national trait. The British don’t hate. We dislike, we are annoyed, or we Don’t Care Terribly Much For This Sort Of Thing. We rather like silly. But thanks to a set of algorithms that placed a tiny number of confused questionnaire-answerers into the grasping hands of an even tinier […]
I had always imagined – and been fully prepared – to turn into my creation one day, even though I’d originally intended to become John May. When you spend so long inside someone else’s mind it becomes second nature to compare and contrast their nature with your own. I hadn’t expected to be trapped with […]
I’ve described the struggles of creating a long-term detective series, and you sent back some very interesting comments, so let me go through some of the main points. The idea of favouring Bryant over May goes to the heart of the problem with a series. There has always been a weight toward Bryant because every […]
As any series extends, its effects diminish. We come to expect certain things from characters, we recognise the writer’s stylistic tics, we feel we can see where the plot is going, we grow tired and want something new. But there are many exceptions, from Batman to Doctor Who, because they’ve ceased to be a series […]
I first noticed a problem when I went back to check on a character’s name in Book 12 of my Bryant & May novels. The character was using a Blackberry. As far as I know these devices have gone; nothing dates faster than technology. I flicked back through earlier books; a Fax machine turned up […]
‘England’s Finest’ is out in October, and I know this is still a rough and I probably shouldn’t be showing it yet but I’m so excited and love it so much. Once again showing the flagrant disregard for geographical accuracy that has been with us from ‘Strange Tide’ onwards, ‘England’s Finest’ offers a wonky view […]
