Back Alley Webzine - for more modern noir....

I love finding new sites, blogs and whatnot on the Net. And I also love spreading the word when I find something cool, good or just plain sassy.

My latest 'find' might not be a find for some of you more intrepid readers, but for me it was great...

Back Alley Webzine contains a load of moderns noir shorts for you to savour. It's Edited by PWA Shamus Award Nominee and Two-Time SMFS Derringer Award Winner Richard Helms and contains a nice history of noir for your pleasure, served with a full helping of the moderns stuff...


Check it out for yourself!

Killing A Friend: once again and with feeling....

After some technical difficulties (proofing work) Killing A Friend is live in electronic format. The print version will follow in a week or so...

For those of you that missed it the first time, here's the cover blurb:


Familiarity brings destruction. Temptation leads us into extraordinary circumstances.

Set in Göteborg, Sweden, Killing a Friend is a novel about people that love each other, about friends, acquaintances and life partners.

Lost souls in lost lands - far from home and clinging to the familiar, despite their better judgment - a story that takes normal life one step further.

Two friends, two artists, two men that love the same woman - a tragedy, an unforgivable able deception and a chance to begin again. An examination of what love is and what love could be.

Killing a Friend is a book of love, lust and morals. It is an examination of the self, a questioning of social mores, a valley of personal grief and a ray of light for those that suffer.

There... I feel better now...

Another Paul Auster book... what does this mean?

I just finished reading 'Invisible' by Paul Auster.

Excellent book. Full of life, lust, lies and love. And there's death (by knife) and murder... by well I'll not tell you... But overall, apart from being a stylistic tour de force, Invisible is also a crime novel at heart, just throbbing to break free from its literary chains.

Auster apparently cut his teeth on writing crime novels under a "nom de plume". I wish he'd take another serious look at the genre and give us a full-on crime novel. I can almost feel the invisible chains that he's using to stop himself releasing his noir side...

Come on Paul, get the knuckle dusters on and give us some more sex, greed, death and mayhem - crime style....

Russian Crime Fiction

I'd never really thought about Dostoevsky as a crime writer - even though he wrote Crime & Punishment - it always somehow seemed to be literature and not crime... but I came across this short piece on a site called Fictiondb and it made me rethink my view on what constitutes a crime, mystery, or thriller/suspense novel.


The site lists the following Russian authors as the literal godfathers of Russian crime writing...Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nicolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Nabokov, Vil Lipitov, Alexander Pushkin, Lev Sheinen, Boris Sokoloff and Leo Tolstoy


I haven't picked up a Russian writer in anger for years.... maybe it's time I revisited these guys... My last connection to Russia was a 1989 Dnepr Mt-11, which was produced in Kiev - which was then a part of the Soviet Union... but not quite Russia.... Think of it as a Ural, but with more character and less moving parts...


I digress...