Tag Archives: Mystery

Author Encounter & Giveaway | Peter James

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Now how could I resist an invitation like that? Meet an author, meet Harper Collins people I chat with on Twitter, and, most of all, eat snacks. Seriously, though, if you’ve caught my review of Peter James’ Dead Man’s Grip, you’d know that I’ve recently become a fan of his Roy Grace series. After meeting him last Wednesday, I must say I’ve become a major fan of the man as well.

Sometimes called the real-life Castle, Peter James researches his novels by going out with actual police officers on their beats. Once, he was with some police officers when they encountered a group of drunken men. Off to the sidelines taking notes for a book, Peter realized it was about to get violent and that he had to do something. “So,” he told all of us gathered at the Harper Collins Canada office, “I immediately looked for the smallest guy.” That brand of heroism explains the tiny handcuff pin he was wearing on his lapel, a joke gift from a police force because that was about the size of the criminals he was capable of arresting.

I don’t really know what I was expecting when I met Peter James, but it certainly wasn’t the super smiley, sweet and absolutely delightful man he turned out to be. After all, this was the man whose book turned me off salmon for weeks. (Interesting side note: I actually ate smoked salmon before meeting Peter, and regretted it when he mentioned the salmon scene in his talk.) Still, when he walked in with a glass of wine and a huge smile, he looked mostly like a kindly librarian, and you just can’t help but smile back.

I’m very nervous when meeting authors, so it helped that Peter was so friendly. It was so easy to chat with him that Cory from Harper Collins finally had to step in at around 9 pm and suggest that we ask our questions while getting our books signed.

Interesting things I learned about Peter James

  • He once had himself locked inside a coffin for half an hour, to see how it felt like, so he could write a scene authentically. “I wasn’t completely stupid,” he said. Before getting into the coffin, he’d asked someone how much air he’d have inside. Answer: 3 hours if he didn’t panic, 1 hour if he hyperventilated. So Peter went for 30 minutes. Still, as the funeral parlour man was walking off after sealing him in, Peter couldn’t help thinking about how old the funeral parlour man was. Plus, “What if he gets run over before coming back?”
  • He allowed himself to be locked in a van and submerged in Shoreham Harbour as a publicity stunt for Dead Man’s Grip. Why? Well, Jeffrey Deaver’s James Bond novel Carte Blanche was being released at about the same time. Peter wanted Roy Grace to give James Bond a bit of competition in publicity. Don’t believe me? Check out this video:

I asked Peter if he ever spoke to criminals for his research. I personally found Tooth (cold-blooded killer for hire in Dead Man’s Grip) a very well-developed character, without us getting too much of his back story, which is very rare for thrillers. Turns out, he does. He wanted to find out the motivations behind various crimes, so, for example, he once interviewed a career burglar. It also turns out that Peter intentionally shows all three perspectives in his books: victim, cop and killer. It’s an interesting choice, something I liked in Dead Man’s Grip, and definitely not an easy balancing act.

Win a signed copy of Dead Man’s Grip

It was a fun evening, and I especially love the way Harper Collins packaged our event swag. As I mentioned in my Dead Man’s Grip review, Shannon from Harper Collins had already kindly given me a copy a few weeks ago. Personally, I think he’s a fantastic writer, and if you haven’t read him before, I think Dead Man’s Grip is a great way to get into the series. (My review here) I’d love to introduce you all to this mystery series. (Or, if you’re already a major Peter James fan, I’d love to let you read his latest!)

So here’s the deal: leave me a comment on this post by October 15. Imagine you’re a novelist. What’s the wildest stunt you’d pull to research or publicize your book? (If you can’t think of anything, just leave whatever comment you want. I just think it’ll be fun to see what kind of stunts you’d come up with. 🙂 ) One of you, randomly picked, will win a signed copy of Dead Man’s Grip. (Sorry, I’m keeping the cool bookmark and ever cooler yellow crime scene tape for myself. 🙂 ) Canada only, please.

Vote Peter James

By the way, Peter is also in the running for ITV3 People’s BestsellerDagger Award. You can vote for him here till Oct 7th, 9 am. Whether you’re already a huge fan of the Roy Grace series, or you just want to give props to an author who’d actually lock himself in a coffin and risk drowning himself in a van, you can vote there up to 5 times. Bonus: If he wins, Cory from Harper Collins Canada has promised to throw an authentic English fish and chips party like the one Peter James promised his UK fans. Personally, I like Roy Grace, I think Peter locking himself in a coffin is insane but kinda cool, and I love fish and chips. So I voted.

EDIT: Yay! Peter James won the People’s Bestseller Dagger Award! Very well deserved, in my opinion.

Another Dagger winner is S.J. Watson, whose novel Before I Go to Sleep kept me up all night, literally. Loved it and blogged about it here.

Congratulations, Peter and S.J.!

Do leave a comment for your chance to win a signed Dead Man’s Grip. Trust me: you’ll love it.

Review: Dead Man’s Grip, Peter James

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Being a fan of British mysteries, I’ve had Peter James on my To Read list for a while. So when Shannon from Harper Collins Canada asked if I was interested in his new Roy Grace mystery, Dead Man’s Grip, I jumped at the chance to check him out. I had imagined Detective Superintendent Roy Grace as a thin man with a handlebar mustache and Peter James’ books as P.D. James type genteel whodunnits. Turns out Roy Grace is a Paul Newman lookalike and Dead Man’s Grip, at least, is more Jo Nesbo than P.D. James. (A quick check on IMDB reveals an actor named Roy Marsden played P.D. James’ detective Adam Dalgleish several times, which must have led to my mistake.)

Dead Man’s Grip is more a police procedural thriller than a mystery. We know who the villain is almost right away; the only question is whether or not Grace can catch him in time. A traffic accident kills the son of a member of the New York mafia. The victim’s mother, heartbroken, offers a reward for information about the identity of the other drivers involved in the accident. Grace points out that the usual wording is “information leading to the arrest and conviction of someone,” and the way this victim’s mother has phrased the offer of reward hints at vigilantism. Sure enough, the other drivers in the accident start dying, in particularly gruesome ways, and Grace fights to keep the surviving driver safe.

Expecting a genteel mystery, I was particularly affected by the gore, and it was just an exciting read throughout. James isn’t quite as explicit as Jo Nesbo or Val McDermid, whose descriptions of torture can get into horrific, excruciating detail. Rather, James relies more on the power of suggestion, which in my case at least, is just as effective. One scene in particular, of a man walking around a smoked salmon factory, absolutely freaked me out. I felt like I was watching one of those horror/suspense movies with the camera zoomed right into the actor’s face, and you know, you just know that something horrible is about to happen but you can’t see any hint of it yet onscreen. Reading that scene, I completely lost my appetite for salmon, and James hadn’t described anything gruesome yet. I love it when an author can build such an atmosphere of tension, and still withhold the source of that tension from the reader.

I also like how James fleshed out the various characters. Both Carly (one of the drivers in the accident) and Fernanda (the accident victim’s mother) are portrayed as very devoted mothers, so it’s interesting to see them up against each other. Even Tooth (killer for hire) is an interesting character, chilling in his methodical approach to murder yet still more human than the Stieg Larsson supervillain who felt no physical pain. Minor things: Carly made a really stupid decision that annoyed me even though I could somehow understand her reasoning. Also, I wish I knew what Tooth’s original master plan had been, and just how much Carly’s actions had changed it.

This is my first Roy Grace novel, and it certainly won’t be my last. Other than the gripping story, Roy Grace is an interesting character as well, with a complicated love life. His wife has been missing for ten years and his girlfriend is having complications with her pregnancy. I immediately wanted to know if we will ever find out what happened to Grace’s wife (my imagination was running wild). Now, I don’t know if her storyline has been explored in previous novels, or if the question of her fate is one that long-time Peter James fans have been dying to have resolved and I just lucked out by beginning with Dead Man’s Grip. Possible good news for long-time fans then: we find out quite a bit about her story in this book.

Even better news for Canadian fans of Peter James: I found out from his website that he’ll be coming to Toronto in September.

*EDIT*

Toronto fans:

Peter James will be doing a Q&A at Ben McNally Books (366 Bay St) on Tuesday, Sept 20th, 6:30 – 8 pm. Details at the Savvy Reader here.

Are you a fan of Harper Collins Canada on Facebook? Check out their Facebook page for details on how to meet Peter James at the HCC office on Sept 21st, 7 pm.

Review: The City & The City, China Mieville

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I finished China Mieville’s The City & The City days ago, and to be honest, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. The novel begins as an apparent classic crime noir: a woman is found murdered in Beszel, and Inspector Tyador Borlu is called in to investigate. Evidence links the woman to neighbouring city Ul Qoma. Thing is, Beszel and Ul Qoma aren’t geographical neighbours as we are used to. Best I can understand, they overlap somehow, and residents of each city train themselves to un-see people and places from the other city, lest they be charged of Breach and taken away. Borlu’s investigation therefore isn’t so much about a murder as it is about the two cities, and the mythical third city that is rumoured to be between them.

The City & The City isn’t a fun thriller to read on the subway or before bed. The murder mystery is certainly interesting, embroiling Borlu in politics, history and legends that may turn out to be true. But it’s far from an easy read, at least for me, and I had to set aside a few hours to sit, read and work things out. My sister and I then spent even more time discussing the relationship between Beszel and Ul Qoma, and trying to figure out the implications of this relationship. The resolution to the mystery itself turns out to be fairly simple — not simplistic, by any means, but certainly nothing as mind-blowing as the political landscape Mieville depicts — and certainly, it’s possible to read this as a straightforward crime novel.

But I think it’s worth quite a bit more thought than that, a bit more of a puzzle than who the murderer is. The more I got into the way Beszel and Ul Qoma work, the more the world in this novel became familiar. My sister suggested that physically/geographically, Beszel and Ul Qoma might actually be the same city, with the distinction between them only psychological, and, more importantly, willed. The further I read, the more that made sense to me, though Mieville certainly opens the nature of these cities up to debate.

City makes you think, in much the same way as Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness makes you think. It’s a world absolutely nothing like our own, yet it’s also strangely familiar. I’m not sure if I could say I enjoyed it, but it was definitely worth the read.