Shots contributor Mike Ripley must find it exhausting, once a month, to sit down in front of a computer with his piles of notes and his vague memories of cocktail-hour conversations, and try to concoct the latest “Getting Away with Murder” column. It’s quite a diverse compendium of matters both trivial and trenchant.
Consider Ripley’s June column, for instance. In addition to remarks about new series on offer from Deryn Lake, Adrian Magson, and Peter Guttridge, he applauds the lengthy career of Lindsey Davis (whose 21st Marcus Didius Falco novel has been released), reveals the true identity of the mysterious author “Rebecca Chance,” cheers Reginald Hill’s forthcoming standalone (The Woodcutter), and teases us with news about the sequel to Stuart Neville’s award-winning debut novel, The Twelve (aka The Ghosts of Belfast). He also publicizes the latest crop of print-on-demand “Top Notch Thrillers” he’s editing for Ostara Publishing. Among those releases of too-good-to-be-forgotten works is Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows (1960). Ripley tells me that making Watcher easily available again to readers is the satisfactory conclusion to “a personal quest for me, which began two years ago when I [wrote about that novel in a] Friday ‘Books You Have to Read’ [essay] for The Rap Sheet--a copy of which I sent to Household’s daughter to prove I was a fan!” (Never doubt the power of persistence.)
You will find all of Ripley’s tidbits and touts here.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
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