Ashley Dyer Tattoo Dein Körper ist seine Leinwand – und seine Absichten sind mörderisch Liverpool: Ein perfider Frauenmörder hält die Stadt in Atem. Seine Opfer findet man stets sorgfältig arrangiert und von Kopf bis Fuß mit kryptischen Tätowierungen bedeckt – die ihnen vor ihrem Tod mit einem Dorn beigebracht wurden. Detective Greg Carver und seine […]
Ashley Dyer Splinter i blodet Kriminalassistent Ruth Lake låser sig ind hos sin chef, inspektør Greg Carver og finder ham bevidstløs, skudt. Hun sletter omhyggeligt alle spor i lejligheden, hvorefter hun låser sig ud. Minuttet efter går hun igen ind i huset, sætter fingeraftryk og ringer efter politiet. Er hun hans gerningsmand? Hvorfor slette sporene?
Ashley Dyer Ristat i hud I månader har poliskommissarie Greg Carver jagat en gäckande seriemördare. En mördare som tillfångatar sina offer och ägnar veckor åt att tatuera varje centimeter av deras kroppar. Tills de blivit ett konstverk att visa upp för världen. Utredningen verkar ha gått i stå när Greg Carver en sen kväll brutalt
Ashley Dyer Astillas en la sangre Engaño, traición y tensión en un thriller policiaco de alta tensión Astillas en la sangre es una de esas novelas apasionantes e inolvidables que atrapan al lector con sus giros argumentales y su suspense constante. La sargento Ruth Lake y el comisario Greg Carver andan a la caza de
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It’s a challenge to turn to p 69 of your novel, and assess if it is representative of the rest of the book. I accepted the challenge for The Cutting Room, book 2 in the Carver & Lake series: it covered a murder, synaesthesia, and increased gamma brain waves in the dying brain. Click through to see how The
What is The Page 69 test? Read More »
Strand Magazine invited Ashley Dyer to write about Serial Killers in Fact & Fiction. Read our take on real and fictional serial killers, including Dennis Nilsen and The Yorkshire Ripper in fact, and Hannibal Lecter, Dexter Morgan and The Bone Collector in fiction: Strand Magazine.
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The good folk at Crime Reads asked Team Dyer to write about our favourite serial killer novel. Here’s what we said: Crime Reads
The Silence of the Lambs: seminal serial killer novel, and still one of the best Read More »
Canongate, ISBN-13: 978-1-78689-376-5 A Costa Award winner, Kidd has been nominated for many more, and judging by Things in Jars, the accolades are well-deserved. She clearly delights in the written word—its rhythms, cadence and music, and her audacious playfulness with language bring to mind Dylan Thomas and Charles Dickens. Her exuberant prose conjures up the filth and squalor
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Head of Zeus, ISBN-13: 978-1-78854-374-3 In the illusionist’s world, close-up magic is king, and eighteen-year-old prodigy Natalie Webb promised to be one of the best. Then she got burned by an unscrupulous artist who stole her heart along with her best illusion. Nine years on, honest, but grindingly poor, Natalie ekes out an existence performing at frat
Bluff, by Michael Kardos Read More »
A History of My Family in Seven Sicknesses by Stephen McGann
Simon & Schuster (2018) ISBN: 1471160815
The McGann brothers Joe, Paul, Mark and Stephen were Liverpool royalty in the 1980s and 90s, and Stephen McGann has achieved international stardom in the hit TV series Call The Midwife since 2012. Yet his memoir is written in a spirit of humility. He never wanted, nor expected, to find grand ancestors hidden in the public records and he writes as candidly about his ‘slum blood’ as he does about the courage and determination of his forebears. McGann’s genealogical search began aged 17, with romantic fantasies of a triumphant return to his Irish roots. In reality it took 35 years of largely unproductive searches, only sporadically stumbling on crucial pieces of the puzzle – such as a snippet in a reprinted book which led him to a sensational 1912 newspaper report in the New York Tribune, and his ‘lost’ great uncle, James.
Flesh and Blood is a memoir written as drama, and the drama is a rich mix of deprivation, tragedy, mystery, skulduggery, high adventure and even heroism. You don’t often need to be wary of ‘spoilers’ in reviewing a memoir, but McGann’s ancestors bore witness to some of the great tragedies and horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries. He chronicles their progress from destitute Irish immigrants, fleeing the potato famine, through decades of poverty and squalor in Liverpool’s slums, to a slow elevation from illiteracy, starvation, and disease to education and affluence with surprises and shocks aplenty.
He tells his family story through the metaphor of seven maladies: hunger, pestilence, exposure, trauma, breathlessness, heart problems and necrosis. Now, extended metaphors can be tricky beasts, apt to turn and bite you – and it can’t have been an easy task, interweaving social and family history with medical and scientific elements – but McGann manages it all in great style, combining a natural empathy with an actor’s ear for storytelling and the dramatic.
The book is dedicated to his wife, Heidi Thomas (writer and producer of Call the Midwife on TV). An entire chapter is given over to her – not, as you might imagine ‘Breathlessness’ or ‘Heart Problems’—but the one entitled ‘Necrosis’. An unromantic subject to dedicate to the love of your life, perhaps – yet it could be the most searing, painful and heartrending love letter you will ever read.
Flesh and Blood is thrilling as a tale of discovery, but it is far more; this thoughtful, reflective, scientifically literate, often poetic work is an illuminating and deeply moving exploration of family, society, and the human condition.
