by NRB | 6 Jul 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve just finished Sebastian Faulks’s take on PG Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013). Taking up this kind of challenge … or perhaps accepting this kind of commission from a dead writer’s estate, more accurately, has become something of an industry among...
by NRB | 9 Feb 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
A good number of authors who’ve employed series characters have written what are called in the business retrospectives – that is, stories that hark back to earlier events in their characters’ careers. John le Carré did so with Smiley’s People (1979), tracing previous...
by NRB | 6 Oct 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Do popular writers in particular, but other writers in general, compete with each other? This thought was prompted by a quote from historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, which I’ll return to. Did Georgette Heyer compete with Baroness Orczy for top spot in the Regency...
by NRB | 21 Jul 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I have no idea what percentage of mainstream films is based on books. Does anyone? I suspect it’s quite high. In the crime field there have been notable failures. I’ve written before about Howard Hawks’s version of The Big Sleep (1946). It captures some of the...
by NRB | 7 Jul 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
This will be the last of my prison despatches – that is, columns to do with my two-months-plus time in hospital. Unlike some patients who are able to sit in their beds or on their chairs and stare at the walls or occupy themselves with television, I’d be crawling...
by NRB | 31 Mar 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
‘Where do your ideas come from?’ is a question often put to authors, especially crime writers. When I was busy at the trade I tended to fob it off with answers about my imagination and picking up on things I’d overheard when I was a journalist or listened...
by NRB | 29 Jan 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
With notable exceptions – Ian Fleming’s fulsome praise (to his face) of Raymond Chandler in a 1958 BBC broadcast interview, for example – writers are not usually particularly generous to each other. It’s a competitive business with everyone, as it were, fighting for...
by NRB | 30 Oct 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
An agent never puts on his hat and goes home. – Raymond Chandler If you look at a photograph of a street scene in any Australian city taken in, say, the 1940s and 1950s, you will notice that the great majority of the adults, men and women, are wearing hats. A similar...
by NRB | 23 Oct 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
At one time I had a lot of Hemingway’s books on my shelves – novels, short story collections, journalism, even Death in the Afternoon (1932), although I never sympathised with his passion for bullfighting. I’ve always thought that the story ‘Fifty Grand’, about a...
by NRB | 2 Jan 2014 | Giveaways |
Test your feline intuition with this special quiz celebrating our literary cats. Answers are posted below. Good luck! 1 TS Eliot wrote a book of poems that inspired the hit musical Cats. What was the title of the original book? 2 What is the name of Lewis...
by NRB | 18 Oct 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I suppose I’ve had a bit more experience of firearms than the average urbanite. When young I was an enthusiastic sharer of a friend’s Diana air rifle. This was a lower-powered version of the then ubiquitous Daisy air rifle. My friend’s father, tolerant of his son’s...
by NRB | 9 Aug 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
For I will consider my cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God … Christopher Smart Jubilate Agno The 18th-century ‘mad poet’ Christopher Smart is not the only writer to have celebrated a cat. Raymond...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]