Q+A with............... ME

OK, Carl – game on! Here are your questions!

What have you been up to during lockdown?

Trying to catch up on the huge pile of unwatched dvd’s and unread books I’ve got lying around the place but I keep buying more so it’s a losing battle. I’m  in the middle of doing a roundup of everything I’ve watched and read over the last 9 ( is it  week 9 now?) weeks so that’s coming soon . I’ve got  a couple of book reviews to finish off and I’m also going to be reviewing some more movies since they seem to go down quite well.

You’re a huge fan of James Bond, so which Bond actor is your favourite and why?

 I absolutely love all the Bond’s but…. It’s Pierce , I just love the how he can go from being charming and sophisticated to being a cold hearted assassin . So he’s slap bang in the middle between Moore and Connery. Probabaly best to pretend Die Another Day never happened.

There’s a graph somewhere online that charts every Bond’s kill count and Pierce came out on top ,  If you look at him that way he’s the best Bond we’ve ever had so I’d like the next fella to be more like Pierce than Daniel Craig.

And favourite Bond film to date?

Goldeneye. Everything just seemed to fall perfectly into place with that film. From the direction , to the cast to the stunts . its one of the few that can’t be faulted

If you could, which Bond car would you buy?  I wouldn’t say no to any of them apart from the 2CV but Purely because of the noise it makes, the DBS from Quantum Of Solace

Where did your fascination of collecting watches come from, and which one in your collection has the most fascinating history?

I like mechanical stuff and I like taking them apart to fit new batteries and straps , which incidently is pretty much the only skill I’ve acquired during lockdown.

My Grandad has a gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual which I fell in love with at an early age . So that’s probably where it comes from.  I buy and sell a lot of watches so I tend to forget what I’ve owned but old seiko’s are good fun.

As to which one has the best history, probably my Casio F91-W digital, everybody’s had one of those.  I’ve got a Tissot Courtourier but that’s away at the moment, it was sent off for a new battery the day before the lockdown DOH! . My favourites probably an old Accurist I bought when I was 14. I’ve got one of the limited editon 007 swatch watches on order as well ,they’re going for silly money but I found one for a good price.

Can you share a photo of your dog, so everyone can see how cute Pip is?

 

Where can we find you?

(e.g. blog, social media)

Blog

https://bookebloke.blogspot.com/

twitter

https://twitter.com/bloke_book

Instagram

bookbloke

Film_bloke

From the books you've read to date in 2020, what are your top five recommendations? (And they don't have to include mine!!)

Die Alone by Simon Kernick

Only Fools And Stories By David Jason

On Her Majestys Secret Service by Ian Fleming

The Wrong side of goodbye by Michael Connelly

False Witness By Andrew Grant

How Not To Be A Professional Racing Driver by Jason Plato. ( worth buying for the JCB story alone)

Q+A Rachel Amphlett

Q+A with one of my favourite authors. Rachel Amphlett . 

How's lockdown going? 

Put it this way, there has been a LOT of writing going on!

You've got a new series out featuring Mark Turpin, can you give us the essence of it? 

The Detective Mark Turpin series is set in the Vale of the White Horse, a picturesque corner of the Berkshire/Oxfordshire border that is steeped in history from Bronze Age settlements through to Second World War airfields and more.

The locations and settings are as much a character as the people in these stories, and they have a slightly different feel to them from the Kay Hunter series.

When we first meet Mark, he’s emerged from a turbulent time with Wiltshire Police and has moved to the Vale in order to try to make some sense of his life and ease back into work. His sabbatical ends abruptly with the vicious murder of a parish priest.

How many books have you got planned featuring Mark? 

It’ll be an ongoing series – book 2, HER FINAL HOUR is out in November, book three is already written and ready to be published in 2021, and I’ll start work on book 4 in the New Year.

I visited Abingdon – where Mark is based – in October last year and had a wander around, and from that I’ve already got 2-3 new ideas lined up for Mark and his team that I want to explore.

What gave you the idea for this new series?

I had some ideas going around in my head for detective stories that wouldn’t fit in the Kay Hunter world simply due to the locations and settings.

I lived in the area where the series is set while I was playing guitar in bands in my 20s and my Dad grew up there, so what with all that and visits to grandparents when I was growing up, I’m very familiar with all the landmarks and locations.

Originally, the Kay Hunter series was going to be set there – or so I thought. Kay Hunter had other ideas, and that series moved to Maidstone…

How can we expect Mark's character to evolve over the course of the series? 

He’s still finding his feet in his new role in Oxfordshire, and readers will see how he’s struggling with that in book 2, HER FINAL HOUR but his working relationship with his colleague DC Jan West is the anchor that holds him steady. I’m having a lot of fun writing about the two of them – they’re chalk and cheese.

The Kay Hunter books are still going strong, what does the future hold for her? 

We’ve got TURN TO DUST coming out on July 13, and I’ve just started writing book 10 in the series so she and the team are still going strong – I have a lot of fun writing this series, too so as long as you enjoy reading them, I’ll keep writing them. I’ve also got some surprises lined up for readers later this year so I’d recommend signing up to my Reader Group for first dibs on that news :)

Would you write another standalone like The Friend Who Lied? 

Absolutely – the standalone novels are a great way to capture stories that don’t fit in one of my series and gives me a chance to try new writing skills so I’m always learning.

Would you ever be tempted to write a continuation novel for another series e.g. Bond or Sherlock Holmes? 

I wouldn’t rule it out completely but it’d have to be for the right reasons and at the right time, simply because I’ve got so many of my own ideas lined up to write over the next 2-3 years – and of course, by the time I get to the end of next year I’ll already be planning ahead for the next few years!

Which author have you discovered in the last 12 months that’s really surprised you?

I don’t know why I hadn’t read Cara Hunter’s series before now – time, probably! – but I discovered her first book Close to Home last year and quickly smashed through the read of the series in no time at all. I can’t wait for the next one.

Which movie or TV show have you watched during lockdown that's really surprised you? 

We’ve just binged seasons 1-3 of Travelers on Netflix and now I’m bereft because there’s no season 4. It’s another show that we missed the first time around while we were living in Australia but I got very invested in the characters. Clever ending, too. It surprised me because I don’t read sci-fi but I do like a lot of the TV shows – my other half’s favourite genre is sci-fi so through him I’ve discovered The Expanse and Picard as well.

What new releases are you most looking forward to? 

Michael Connelly’s Fair Warning, out on May 26 – I’ve already got my copy pre-ordered, and please don’t expect any writing to happen until I’ve finished reading it. Which will probably be between 24-36 hours – I love Connelly’s writing and will have to force myself to slow down while I’m reading it!

You always seem to have new projects on the go, how do you keep track of them all? 

I use an Excel spreadsheet set out a bit like a Gantt chart – I used to work as a project administrator in Australia and studied project management. All projects use one to keep track of their design and production schedule. My version is a slimmed-down version of that. I use it to note down when a book is due to be finished, when it’s got to be sent to the copy editor, proof reader, audio studio if we’re doing that format, and what the publication date is. Of course, by the time a book goes to the copy editor I’m already working on the next one.

What’s next for you?

I’m scheduled to finish the next Kay Hunter book by the end of July and then I plan to use August to write some short stories and learn some new skills before starting the next book on 1 September.

The second book in the Detective Mark Turpin series, HER FINAL HOUR will be out on November 9 and I’ve got a couple of surprises up my sleeve for later in the year as well to share with readers.

Links and things:

Instagram/Twitter: @RachelAmphlett

Website: www.rachelamphlett.com

Reader Group: https://www.rachelamphlett.com/join-rachels-reader-club/

and now for something i've never done before. asked an author to pose ME some questions. keep an eye put for the next post to see that.

Book Review Past Tense by Lee Child

Book Review Past Tense by Lee Child

The 23rd Jack Reacher book starts with Reacher wandering aimlessly through new hampshire when he spots a road sign for the town his father grew up in. Being reacher he has nowhere to go and plenty of time to get there , so he decides to take a detour an have a look around. Except when he starts asking questions , it transpires that no one called Reacher has ever lived there….   

Meanwhile a short while away a young couple named Patty and Shorty are trying to get their knackered old honda civic from canada to new york to sell a chest full of ‘treasure’ but when they break down outside a motel in the middle of nowhere it quickly becomes clear that something isn't right. And the motel owner isn't exactly keen to help them as he has something truly barbaric in mind for his ‘guests’  after they make several botched attempts to escape from trying to mend their junker of a car to stealing a quad bike to good old fashioned making a run for it.

As the two seemingly unconnected storylines come together ,Past Tense goes from Reacher’s episode of who do you think you are? To one of the darkest novels Child has ever written , its not quite as dark as the horrific events in Make Me but it gets close.

In amongst all the darkness though past tense is shot through with all the bar fights and dry humour and plain eccentricity that Reacher has become famous for and there's even a tip of the hat to the #metoo movement . 

Overall Past Tense is a classic Reacher novel and serves as a reminder of why even after 23 books and counting Lee Child is the finest crime writer working today  and when he inevitably ends the series it will be a very sad day.  That's for damn sure.

Verdict. Cracker

Book Review: Bridge To Burn by Rachel Amphlett

Book review: bridge to burn by Rachel amphlett

 The Kay Hunter series is something of a must for me, every time a new one comes out everything else gets put on hold whilst I blow through it in a few days and the seventh entry in the series, bridge to burn is no exception.

In bridge to  burn Kay and the team are faced with their most unusual case yet When a mummified body falls through the ceiling of a recently redeveloped office building , the main question being , how in the name of bloody hell did it get up  there?

As always nothing Is ever quite as it seems, as the investigation progresses the criminal underbelly of the construction industry rears its ugly head with dodgy working practices, theft , blackmail all come into play and the list of suspects is varied, unpredictable and gets longer as the book goes on.   

Away from mummified bodies falling through ceilings Kay’s personal life also takes a turn for the worse when she’s thrown into  a hospital room with her mother , who openly despises her daughter’s career choice and the danger it puts her in. but in bridge to burn its nice to see the ice melt a little.

Bridge to burn is unique in the series because it focuses on just one death and it soon becomes clear that it may not have been a murder at all , was it an accident,? a robbery gone wrong? This is the tangent the book goes off in towards the end and the conclusion to the story is ….. shocking, positively shocking.

Bridge to burn is another home run from Rachel Amphlett ,im starting to wonder what her secret is but I suppose if writing crime novels was easy we’d all be doing it…..

Verdict cracker

Movie review: The Rhythm Section

 Movie review: The Rhythm Section It's notoriously hard to get a new action franchise off the ground these days, taken. November man and Jack Reacher have all either flopped, run out of ideas or switched to TV within the space of a movie or two.

 Launching a female led action franchise, despite the screeches of people on the Internet cesspit that is twitter is so difficult that most producers sadly don't even bother.
 So the question is can Blake Lively playing Mark Burnell's Stephanie Patrick succeed where Tom Cruise, Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson all failed? The early signs are good. The Rhythm Section is produced by Barbara Broccoli, yes that one. And is directed by Reed Morano.
 But don't be fooled by the Bond connection, the rhythm section is unashamedly its own thing.
Yes some of the locations have popped up in Bond films. London, Tangier, Scotland, France and err Surrey
 I'm not going to give away any spoilers here , go see the movie. But the gist is that Stephanie Patrick loses her family in the worst way imaginable, a “plane crash” over the Atlantic .
Three years later while working as a prostitute in London she's visited by a journalist who has evidence which points to the fact that it wasn't a plane crash at all, it was terrorism and the cell who carried out the attack is still out there.
 That news pulls Patrick out of her slump and she vows to kill every single person responsible. After a few months training in Scotland with Jude Law’s ex mi6 agent known initially as “B” , a likable Bond type character who reluctantly takes Stephanie under his wing and teaches her hand to hand combat,driving ,shooting and even makes her swim across a freezing cold loch .
He tries to convince Patrick that vengeance isn't all its cracked up to be “ even if you do succeed it won't be worth it” Taking on the alias of Petra, a dead female assassin, murdered by Jude Law’s character whose body was conveniently never found.
Patrick slowly grows from a scared drug addicted ex prostitute into a someone with the makings of a cold blooded assassin.

The Rhythm Section is not a perfect movie but Reed Morano and Blake lively have laid the foundations of a possible franchise here and it seems like MR Bond has a worthy stablemate in Stephanie Patrick and i take my hat off to Barbara Broccoli for taking a chance and making it . Verdict : Very Good

 

book review cleaning the gold by lee child and karin slauhgter

Cleaning the gold by lee child and Karin slaughter

Cleaning the gold is a short story featuring 6ft5 brick shithouse jack reacher and will trent , an undercover cop investigating a 22 year old murder . His main suspects name? Jack Reacher.  Reacher is on a mission of his own , to bring down a criminal gang operating at the heart of the American military .  Naturally there’s something much bigger at play something neither of them could have anticipated. Question is, can reacher and trent team up and play nicely?

Those of you who’ve read this blog before will know that I’m something of a fan of Reacher or Sherlock Homeless as I like to call him however I’ve not read anything by Karin slaughter before so I was keen to give cleaning the gold a go. Naturally being set at fort knox there’s a few Goldfinger references in there , sadly though that’s about as much as I can remember about the whole story , in fairness Its been a few months between reading the story and writing this .

To be  honest I found cleaning  the gold to be rather underwhelming , it felt rushed and I know its  meant to be short but it seemed to stop just as it was getting going , lots of short stories seem to suffer from this which is why I rarely bother with them. 

Happily one good thing I can remember is that the banter between trent and reacher was top drawer and I couldn’t tell who wrote what , normally when two best sellers team up you can but not so here.

Overall cleaning the gold is ultimately disappointing but its worth a read if you fancy something short and quick.

Verdict : average

Top 5 fictional characters

Top 5 fictional characters

Since I have no book reviews finished at the moment I thought I’d do a quick list of my top 5 fictional characters of all time

1.       Bond. James. Bond

The fact that Ian Fleming’s ever green gentleman bastard is my favourite fictional character ever will come as a surprise to precisely no one.  I can still remember watching Gold finger on TV.   As a kid with my late granddad . so there’s sentimental value there too.  The books are still ridiculously entertaining even 60 years on and the films have repeatedly pulled me out of some pretty dark places mentally. Sometimes I find my love of bond hard to explain but hey, a Blu Ray  Bond box set is more fun and  cheaper than therapy.

2.       Jack Reacher

Okay, this one won’t come as a surprise either, given that Lee Child is probably the author I review the most around these parts. Imagine if James bond was a hobo , that’s how I explain reacher to people and almost all of them give the books a try and end up loving them.  We’ll gloss over the movies because whilst they were very good Tom Cruise was too bloody short .

3.       M .

Another Bond character ends up in this list because of two words. Judi Dench. Need I say more? She stole the show as M right from the get go. I like to think that Dench’s M is the only person Bond was ever really scared of. No actor, and im taking precisely no arguments on this has ever played M better than Judi Dench and probably never will until they inevitably cast Olivia Colman in the role

4.       Detective Kay hunter

Another one that shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’ve been following this series since it started in 2016 and it just gets better and better with every book, which is rare for a series of this type, most of them have peaks and troughs but somehow Rachel Amphlett manages to avoid the troughs and just hit home run after home run. Why this hasn’t been snapped up for a Bosch style box set ive no idea.

5.        Thomas The Tank Engine

My childhood can be summed up in three characters , Bond ,Harry Potter and the worlds favourite steam engine . like Bond I can vividly remember watching Thomas for hours on end with my late granddad , he even gave me a  the entire railway series as a birthday present one year . I still have it and apart from an old Accurist watch its my most prized possesion.  I still love thomas to this day and dont mind admitting that is still watch it now and again. a few yearsa s ago i had a bash at a thomas short story , which i might revisit and publish on here.

Book Review The Hangman’s Hold by Micheal Wood

The hangman’s hold is the fourth book in the Matilda Darke series . And being the straight talking Yorkshireman I am I’m not going to piss about . This is the best book I’ve read this year so far. 

When a convicted peadofile is found hanged in his living room after a date it’s down to DCI Matilda Darke and her team to find the killer before he strikes again, but when a second and third murder quickly follow it becomes apparent that to Darke that she’s go5 a vigilante on her hands .  With the body’s continuing to pile up Matilda and the team come under pressure from all sides to catch the killer, but with no obvious suspects, could the murderer be one of Matilda’s own team.?

Even though it deals with a pretty dark subject matter, several of them actually, The Hangmans hold is shot through with gallows humour, I actually laughed out loud in a few places.  

Another thing I loved about this book is Matilda’s boss, ACC Valerie Masterson , she’s tough and compassionate in equal measure and is just at home giving Matilda a bollocking as she is at picking her up when she’s down.  She’s a genius character a reminds me of Judi Dench’s M in the bond films. She deserves a stand-alone novel all to herself.

This is the first Matilda Darke book I’ve read,and I’ve already got the others on the kindle . Michael Wood may only be a handful of books into his series but hopefully there are many more to come because he could end up doing for Sheffield what Ian rankin did for Edinburgh and put his home city on the crime fiction map.

 Verdict : cracker

Book Review Forever And A Day by Anthony Horowitz

Forever And A Day by Anthony Horowitz

After blowing Sebastian Faulks, Jeffrey Deaver and William Boyd's Bond books out of the water with Trigger Mortis I wasn't exactly surprised to hear Anthony Horowitz had been asked to pen another 007 adventure. Question is, could he live up to Trigger Mortis?  Simple answer? Yes. 

Forever And A Day goes right back to the beginning, when 007 is washed up dead on a beach in Marseille and 2 other agents out of action M is forced to bring in some new talent. His name? Bond. James Bond.  After successfully carrying out his first 2 kills Bond takes over the 007 designation and is instructed by M to find the men who killed the old 007 

Forever and a day mainly takes place in the South of France but not the glamorous parts we've all seen a million times before, instead Horowitz takes bond to the grotty criminal underbelly. 

Like the novel that went before it Trigger Mortis Horowitz has had some help in the form of unseen material from Ian Fleming , the one that gets featured this time round isn't as well fleshed out as the one from trigger mortis but its entertaining all the same.

Forever And A Day is shot through with classic Bond elements ,glamourous locales ,beautiful strong  women, sneaking around , gambling , the obligatory bollocking from M and so on. Madame sixteen, the main Bond girl /woman /lady   I'm not sure what we're meant to be calling them now. Introduces bond to Moorland cigarettes, shaken not stirred martinis and even gives him a cigarette case with "forever and a day" engraved on it.
I  loved Madame 16 and would love to see her in one of the movies someday. Actually, I'd wager that Forever and a day will become the first continuation Bond book to be made into a film. 

I said in my top 5 books of 2018 round up that I couldn't fault forever and a day. But in the last few months I've thought of something wrong with it, it simply isn't long enough. 

Verdict : Cracker 

*No Time To Die spoilers*  actually its all over the news so it's not a spoiler and it's related to forever and a day. Promise. 

You've probably found it hard not to notice that the 007 codename is all over the news at the moment. Apparently Pheobe Waller - Bridge's big idea is that bond at the beginning of the movie at least is replaced as 007 by Lashana Lynch. 

 Think about it. Bond retired at the end of spectre so M would have had to replace him. Just as M in forever and a day had to replace the old 007 with Bond. 

Now I have no problem with this, let's face it She'll either die or be given another 00 number at the end of the movie and order will be restored

For the benefit of people who read the daily mail and the sun SHE'S NOT PLAYING BOND. BOND IS STILL A BLOKE. And…. Breathe. 

 Now we won't know if its true until the movie comes out in April but if its true one can only imagine where she got that idea from…… 

Book Review : Call To Arms by Rachel Amphlett

Call To Arms By Rachel Amphlett

The fifth entry in this fab series sees kay hunter tackle her most personal case yet. With Kay's mentor and friend Devon sharp suspended from duty after the events of the previous book. To try and clear sharps name Hunter takes on a cold case ,linked not only to sharp but the person who got him suspended in the first place. We also get the chance to see a softer side to DCI Larch, who's world gets turned upside down by a family tragedy. 

This is the first Kay Hunter novel to not feature the storyline with Hunter's nemesis Joseph Demiri. It gets mentioned but it's very much been wrapped up now .  Call To Arms features a cold case, a first for this series and its nice to see Hunter and the team take on something a little different but still proves to be as challenging as a newly committed murder.

All the Kay Hunter books are brilliant but this one might just be the best yet… until the next one.

Book Review : Murder On The Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Book review - murder on the orient express by Agatha Christie
I’d like to start with a confession some of you may find rather surprising given that I mainly review crime fiction.

I’ve never read any Agatha Christie .which means I’m in a class of about 10 because everybody’s read Agatha Christie at some point, she was and is without question the most successful crime writer ever , infact she’s only outsold by the bible and  the person who ruined English lessons for everyone  , William Bloody Shakespeare .

 A few months back however i decided I needed to address this so I took the plunge and ordered what might be the most famous Christie novel ever. Murder on the orient express.
Here’s a basic run down of the plot , just in case you’re a Martian or something and you didn’t already know

The most elegant train of the 1930s, the Orient Express, is stopped by heavy snowfall, with many passengers. A murder is discovered.
This next bit contains spoilers

Poirot is faced with the fact that the victim, Mr Ratchett kidnapped a child int the 1930’s in the hope of being paid a large ransom in exchange for her safe return. This it turns out is the motive for Mrs Hubbard, the hysterical American woman who discovered Ratchett to commit murder , with the help of the other 12 passengers. Yep. They all did it , well, everyone except Poirot obviously.


Funnily enough I actually suspected that all the passengers on the train had a hand in ratchets murder , which means I managed to correctly guess the outcome of a crime novel. There’s a first time for everything.

All in I’m kicking myself for not reading Agatha Christie earlier. I can’t believe how much I enjoyed Murder on the orient express, especially given that it was written in 1934. I guess it goes to show that great literature never ages. My first Agatha Christie. But certainly not the last.

Question is . Which one next ?
I’ll throw that one out to you lot . Leave a comment below.
Verdict. Cracker