Product Description
Len Wanner returns with a new collection of interviews with ten more of Scotland's finest crime writers.
"Fascinating stuff, whether you are a fan of any particular author, or of the genre as a whole, or even of the wider world of Scottish and British Literature in contemporary times. In fact, I may just have to go back and read both volumes again…" – from the foreword by Ian Rankin.
VOLUME ONE brought us page after page of unique insights into how writers think and into the professional secrets of some of the genre's greatest exponents. With THE CRIME INTERVIEWS: VOLUME TWO, once again Wanner's encyclopaedic knowledge of Scottish crime fiction is put to expert use in his enthralling and revealing conversations with another inspired line-up of stars of tartan noir. His latest interview subjects include William McIlvanney, Tony Black, Doug Johnstone, Helen FitzGerald, Quintin Jardine, Gordon Ferris, Craig Russell, Douglas Lindsay, Ray Banks and Denise Mina.
THE CRIME INTERVIEWS: VOLUME TWO also includes a foreword by Ian Rankin and an afterword by Lee Horsley.
Praise for THE CRIME INTERVIEWS: VOLUME ONE
"The discussions range over the craft of writing, the writing life and what Ian Rankin calls the 'huge catholicism of Scottish crime fiction'. Does Tartan Noir exist? What is the appeal of crime fiction? Should the crime writer deal with political issues? Why has there been a turn to dark crime fiction? What does it mean for crime fiction to transcend its genre? Is gallows humour inseparable from the Scottish psyche? All of these and many more questions are illuminated by Len Wanner’s series of entertaining and revealing interviews. Highly recommended!"
– Lee Horsley, author of Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction
"Len Wanner is the perfect interrogator, subtle, accommodating and incisive, and these interviews elicit many layers of deep, dark and vital intelligence."
– John Banville, author of The Sea
"This is fascinating reading and a real treat. A rare insight into the minds of a diverse group of crime writers, writing in one genre, living in proximity, but all with utterly different, individual voices."
– Peter James, author of Dead Like You
"These interviews cut to the very marrow of Scottish crime writing, deep, incisive and bloody. Bloody good fun too."
– Colin Bateman, author of Mystery Man
"Incorporating a comprehensive range of Scottish author interviews, all of them possessing a different slant on the business of professional writing, Wanner has compiled a must-read anthology of the witty, the wise, the weird and the wonderful. I, for one, have always felt that there were too few honest appraisals and insights into the imagined esotericism of being a professional novelist, and here – just as in THE PARIS LITERARY REVIEW interviews, and Williams’ INTO THE BADLANDS – we are given a good long look through an all-too-frequently obscured window. With direct questions, with conversational extrapolations, Wanner has encouraged his interviewees to illuminate, edify, entertain and amuse us, and yet has also persuaded them to give us something of real worth."
– R.J. Ellory, author of A Quiet Belief in Angels
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Len Wanner was born in the Alpine Republic of Bavaria in 1985. When his academic and civil service kept interfering with his reading, he left the country, and when University College Dublin, better known as the All-star Republic of Ireland, gave him a degree at the price of an accent, he left that country, too. Now moving in literary circles, he says he is no longer available as racket stringer, holiday animator, or Lederhosen model, though calls will still be charged at standard network rates. Having found his lady friend in the Almost Republic of Scotland, Mr Wanner is finishing a PhD on crime fiction at the University of Edinburgh, and freelancing as translator, interviewer, and editor of the literary journal
"Fascinating stuff, whether you are a fan of any particular author, or of the genre as a whole, or even of the wider world of Scottish and British Literature in contemporary times. In fact, I may just have to go back and read both volumes again…" – from the foreword by Ian Rankin.
VOLUME ONE brought us page after page of unique insights into how writers think and into the professional secrets of some of the genre's greatest exponents. With THE CRIME INTERVIEWS: VOLUME TWO, once again Wanner's encyclopaedic knowledge of Scottish crime fiction is put to expert use in his enthralling and revealing conversations with another inspired line-up of stars of tartan noir. His latest interview subjects include William McIlvanney, Tony Black, Doug Johnstone, Helen FitzGerald, Quintin Jardine, Gordon Ferris, Craig Russell, Douglas Lindsay, Ray Banks and Denise Mina.
THE CRIME INTERVIEWS: VOLUME TWO also includes a foreword by Ian Rankin and an afterword by Lee Horsley.
Praise for THE CRIME INTERVIEWS: VOLUME ONE
"The discussions range over the craft of writing, the writing life and what Ian Rankin calls the 'huge catholicism of Scottish crime fiction'. Does Tartan Noir exist? What is the appeal of crime fiction? Should the crime writer deal with political issues? Why has there been a turn to dark crime fiction? What does it mean for crime fiction to transcend its genre? Is gallows humour inseparable from the Scottish psyche? All of these and many more questions are illuminated by Len Wanner’s series of entertaining and revealing interviews. Highly recommended!"
– Lee Horsley, author of Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction
"Len Wanner is the perfect interrogator, subtle, accommodating and incisive, and these interviews elicit many layers of deep, dark and vital intelligence."
– John Banville, author of The Sea
"This is fascinating reading and a real treat. A rare insight into the minds of a diverse group of crime writers, writing in one genre, living in proximity, but all with utterly different, individual voices."
– Peter James, author of Dead Like You
"These interviews cut to the very marrow of Scottish crime writing, deep, incisive and bloody. Bloody good fun too."
– Colin Bateman, author of Mystery Man
"Incorporating a comprehensive range of Scottish author interviews, all of them possessing a different slant on the business of professional writing, Wanner has compiled a must-read anthology of the witty, the wise, the weird and the wonderful. I, for one, have always felt that there were too few honest appraisals and insights into the imagined esotericism of being a professional novelist, and here – just as in THE PARIS LITERARY REVIEW interviews, and Williams’ INTO THE BADLANDS – we are given a good long look through an all-too-frequently obscured window. With direct questions, with conversational extrapolations, Wanner has encouraged his interviewees to illuminate, edify, entertain and amuse us, and yet has also persuaded them to give us something of real worth."
– R.J. Ellory, author of A Quiet Belief in Angels
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Len Wanner was born in the Alpine Republic of Bavaria in 1985. When his academic and civil service kept interfering with his reading, he left the country, and when University College Dublin, better known as the All-star Republic of Ireland, gave him a degree at the price of an accent, he left that country, too. Now moving in literary circles, he says he is no longer available as racket stringer, holiday animator, or Lederhosen model, though calls will still be charged at standard network rates. Having found his lady friend in the Almost Republic of Scotland, Mr Wanner is finishing a PhD on crime fiction at the University of Edinburgh, and freelancing as translator, interviewer, and editor of the literary journal
