Bryant & May novels
Serendipity plays a large part in finding inspiration I’m thinking of starting another book, and to do so I’m going through the hunter/gatherer process that always occurs at this stage. It’s complicated and works differently every time, but part of it involves churning through the work of many writers and thinking about the way they […]
What can I tell you about the upcoming Bryant & May novel that doesn’t give the whole game away? Almost nothing, it turns out, except that it’s the longest, and the last. It’s long because I wanted to tell a bigger story, and the last because I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish […]
There are questions people in every profession ask each other. Apparently when actors who have played King Lear meet each other the first question is always, ‘How heavy was your Cordelia?’ Ours is, ‘Are you still writing those…’ along with a heavy implication that you should have given it up years ago. WS Gilbert’s fiancée […]
‘The Lonely Hour’, Bryant & May’s latest murder mystery, is out in paperback from today. I won’t be celebrating as I’m fasting prior to a hospital exploration – bad timing perhaps but life is full of bad timing, n’est pas? If you’re planning to buy a copy, you can help your local bookshop by ordering through […]
I was recently asked to summarise the Bryant & May novels in a page. This is a great exercise for authors, and allows you to develop a little perspective. Here’s what I came up with. There’s an image that always springs to mind when I start a new Bryant & May book; London office workers […]
(This is the last part of a 3-part article) )Having reached the end of a second arc – that’s two arcs of six books apiece – I once again felt I had peaked. I was especially pleased with ‘The Burning Man’ because it matched the mood of my city. I had got caught up in […]
I’m up to Book 18, if you must know. Seriously, it crossed my mind the other day, what am I up to with these characters? Writers are meant to have a plan, but I started out with a crime novel set in World War II, inside a venerable theatre. I had already created (I say […]
Much to my surprise, the Bryant & May books are only up to their sixteenth volume. The hardback graphic novel isn’t part of the canon, and at any given time I’m two years ahead of you lot, so I sometimes lose my place. With the seventeenth volume currently going through the editing process and a […]
Do books (and book covers) have to reflect our lives as they’re lived right now? I never really intended my detectives to become topical avatars, but it’s hard not to mirror the times in which we live. In a future book I’ll be looking at the state of the nation, but for 2018’s novel I’ll […]
