Tag Archives: thriller
Eleni Kyriacou – A Beautiful Way To Die
Would you kill to be famous? If we want impossible glamour and corruption we could do worse then 1950’s Hollywood. A Beautiful Way To Die is a romp of ambition and decadence in which everyone has an agenda and dark secrets. It weaves its magic through carefully-embedded real-life locations and oblique references to real-world Hollywood scandals, telling a lively tale of a dazzling movie star couple, a wannabe starlet, a mystery woman sequestered and brutalised in a sanatorium, a studio fixer and a pill-pushing studio Dr Feelgood. Tim met Eleni Kyriacou at her publishers to explore this exciting milieu, to discuss the significance of the casting couch, and to carefully … Continue reading
Scarlett Thomas – The Sleepwalkers
You tell yourself “It’s OK, it’s OK … ” but it’s really not! Scarlett Thomas is a tricky novelist to categorise. She has a playful, restless, sleeves-rolled-up approach to writing, in which she seldom ducks the dark turn and the big idea. And you can’t doubt her commitment. She once earned an MSc in Ethnobotany by way of research for a book. Tim has been a fan since the intriguing and dazzling The End Of Mr Y. BooksPodcast caught up with her at her publishers in London and sat down to discuss her new book, The Sleepwalkers. Islands, secrets, betrayals, sinister goings-on, ambiguities, night-time chases, a disastrous wedding and a … Continue reading
Paul Theroux from the archives – Chicago Loop
Paul Theroux – Hamish Hamilton – £20.95 Long before he was the father of Louis Theroux, Paul Theroux was a distinguished and prolific travel writer and novelist. Born in 1941 (and we are delighted to note he is still with us), it is well-known that he joined the Peace Corps in 1963 and was declared persona non grata in Malawi by the dictator Hastings Banda for assisting in the escape of his political opponent. Paul Theroux’s first big success as a writer was the classic The Great Railway Bazaar in 1972, and he is also the author of Mosquito Coast, and Riding The Iron Rooster. In 1990 Tim met him … Continue reading
