Face, was recently published in America by Penguin. Her second, Hurting Distance, is published by Soho Press in hardcover. Penguin US will publish her third, The Point of Rescue, next year. Sophie is also a poet and short story writer. Her website is http://www.sophiehannah.com.(Bios from 2008)
I'm going to be greedy and choose not one book but an entire series of books: Jill McGown's Lloyd and Hill mystery series, that contains such gems as The Murders of Mrs Austin and Mrs Beale, A Shred of Evidence and Plots and Errors. McGown is a crime writer of unparalleled brilliance, and it totally baffles me that she is not better known and more widely read. Anyone who likes Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse books or Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford novels would love McGown's work. Her series characters, Lloyd and Hill, are police officers who work together. They are also a couple. They are brilliantly drawn, flawed but likeable and entirely plausible. I really looked forward to meeting them again in each book, but, even so, they are not the best thing about McGown's books. Her supreme talent was (for, sadly, she died recently) for creating supremely intricate, brilliant plots that would, frankly, make the work of the best Swiss watch-makers look slapdash. Her plotting has an almost mathematical neatness about it and the way the loose ends are surprisingly yet perfectly tied up at the end of each novel is a wonder to behold. McGown is the rightful heir to Agatha Christie's throne, and ought to be more widely recognised as such.
8 comments:
I agree with her about Jill McGown. Her books were consistently good. She's another who died too young, aged. 59.
Jeff M.
Yes, these books are excellent. McGown does a great job of turning your expectations upside-down, showing you a character through one set of eyes then, just when you think you've got a handle on them, shows you the same information from a different perspective.
Coincidently, I just finished Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl this weekend and I at the end I was, Meh, Jill McGown or Minette Walters have been doing this for years.
Deb
So explain to me why there are 10,000 reviews (no exaggeration) on Amazon. The ending really sunk it for me. I wonder if she will change it for the movie.
I answer your Flynn question with another...Why is Stephen King in the running for being the bestselling fiction writer in history?
Because novelty and mastery aren't as popular as familiarity.
I've stated before that I feel like Groucho Marx sometimes - I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member.
In any case, I gave up on the Gillian Flynn long before the end. In fact, I've tried a couple of her books and, though well written, they were just not books I wanted to spend 500 or so pages reading. I've felt the same about some other highly touted writers, so maybe it's me. I just can't read Denise Mina for one. I'm sure it's me, not her, but ... just not for me.
Jeff M.
I don't want to claim superhuman perception, but I think those of us who have read many mysteries/thrillers/crime novels would immediately assume all narrators are untrustworthy and, thus, Gone Girl's big twist halfway through was no big surprise to us. Perhaps Gone Girl's tag line should be, "A thriller for people who haven't read too many thrillers."
Deb
Deb--you have given a specific example that applies well to my generality.
But given the number of books she has sold, that must be a lot of people!
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