‘I wanted to write a suburban Reacher’: Richard Osman talks to Lee Child about class, success and the secret to great crime writing

The two bestselling authors who both started in TV discuss writing as a second career, natural justice – and what they really think of literary fictionIn the four years since Richard Osman published his first Thursday Murder Club novel he has consistently topped the bestseller lists, and now his quartet of retirement-age detectives will be portrayed on screen by a cast including Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. Having grown up in Sussex, Osman started out in TV, where he created and co-hosted the gameshow Pointless. His forthcoming novel We Solve Murders – the start of a new series – features a writer billed as the world’s bestselling novelist, “if you don’t count Lee Child”. Child, the creator of former military police officer Jack Reacher, has enjoyed phenomenal popularity since he left his career – also in TV, where he worked on shows including Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown and Cracker – and started writing, with his first novel published in 1997. Raised in Birmingham, he moved to the US in 1998 and now lives between Manhattan and rural Wyoming. He wrote 24 Reacher novels before announcing in 2020 that he would be handing the series to his brother Andrew.Lee Child I feel that writing is always a second-phase career, or at least should be. It’s that rare thing that not only can you do it when you’re older, but you should do it when you’re older. Pick your cliche: your gas tank is full, your database is compiled. You are a person. You are ready to write.... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2024-09-14 09:00:23 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "‘I wanted to write a suburban Reacher’: Richard Osman talks to Lee Child about class, success and the secret to great crime writing"


Beyond Jokha al-Harthi: Women Writers from the Gulf

When Jokha al-Harthi and Marilyn Booth won the Man Booker International Prize last year, for Booth’s translation of Sayyidat al-Qamr (Celestial Bodies), many hurried to note that al-Harthi was the “first Omani woman writer” to have a book in English translation.While true, this may give the... Continue reading at British Council global

[ British Council global | 2020-02-19 10:26:57 UTC ]
More news stories like this


10 new books to get you through the week.

Every week, the TBR pile grows a little bit more. It’s getting precarious. It’s taking up your whole nightstand. It’s threatening to crush you in your sleep. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. What are you reading this week?   FICTION Brandon Taylor, Real Life (Riverhead) Brandon... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-18 16:20:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Author Gish Jen explains why she created a family of 'Resisters'

'The Resisters,' Gish Jen's first novel in nine years, imagines a class-based dystopian United States. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-06 15:00:56 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Alasdair Gray, Scotch Author of Daring Prose, Dies at 85

He didn’t publish his first novel (which he illustrated himself) until he was 46. But his impact, as both a writer and an artist, has lasted. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2020-01-11 01:15:42 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Kiley Reid’s Sharp First Novel About Race, Careers, and Parenthood

Such a Fun Age is Franzenesque in its interest in how we live now—but in a quieter register. Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2020-01-07 12:30:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Collins and Coe triumph at Costa Book Awards 2019

Sara Collins has won the Costa First Novel Award for her gothic romance, The Confessions of Frannie Langton (Viking), in a stellar year for début authors after three out of the five award categories were won by first-time writers.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-01-06 21:35:49 UTC ]
More news stories like this


De’Shawn Charles Winslow wins 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Huge congratulations to De’Shawn Charles Winslow, who last night took home the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for his acclaimed debut In West Mills. Winslow was presented with the prestigious prize—which has in previous years been awarded to Junot Diaz, Tiphanie Yanique, Viet Thanh Nguyen,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-11 17:00:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year - meet the shortlist

Raymond AntrobusWho/ What inspired you to start writing? I never started writing poetry with the intention of writing books until publishers approached me. I was happy to write poems and travel and read the poems for audiences. I live poem by poem. The idea of a book of poems doesn’t really... Continue reading at British Council global

[ British Council global | 2019-12-05 12:09:15 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Harvill Secker wins Elaine Feeney's first novel at auction

Irish poet Elaine Feeney’s "dazzlingly inventive" debut novel As You Were will be published by Harvill Secker following an auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-02 15:33:42 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Lit Hub Daily: December 2, 2019

What was the first book you fell in love with? The Center for Fiction’s 2019 First Novel Prize authors weigh in. | Lit Hub “Disagree with my argument, beliefs, and my politics, but hands off my syntax!” Lore Segal’s love letter to editors. | Lit Hub “Among Larry’s many strengths as a writer,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-02 11:30:22 UTC ]
More news stories like this


What Was the First Book You Fell in Love With?

We asked this year’s Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalists about their earliest love affairs with reading. Meet them all at the Finalist Reading and Fête on December 9 at The Center for Fiction. * Chia-Chia Lin, author of The Unpassing on The Elves and the Shoemaker, Fran Hunia and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-02 09:49:11 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Why All Americans Should Read “Celestial Bodies”

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi won the Man Booker International Prize this year for its beautifully rendered portrayal of a family’s tangled history in the village of al-Awafi in Oman. The novel was the first book translated from Arabic to win the prize, and more surprisingly, it was the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-26 11:59:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Hodder to publish Veronica Roth's first novel for adults

Hodder & Stoughton is publishing Veronica Roth's first novel for adults, Chosen Ones, after striking a two-book deal. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-20 08:51:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Starry Lite: Isaac Asimov’s Space Ranger

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads the first novel in Isaac Asimov’s juvenile science fiction series Science fiction set in our own solar system arguably began with Lucian, the classical author whose short satirical piece True History paved the way for... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2019-11-15 15:00:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Fanny Burney, Grandmother of the English Novel

Her first novel first novel came out in 1778, when she was twenty-five, and made her famous. Continue reading at The Paris Review

[ The Paris Review | 2019-11-06 14:00:37 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Elena Ferrante’s first novel in 5 years has an English-language pub date.

According to the Bookseller, Elena Ferrante’s first novel in five years will be published in English in June 2020 by Europa Editions. The Lying Life of Adults (great title? or greatest title?) is out in Italian this coming November 7, and the English version will, of course, appear in a... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-28 12:11:35 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Daunt Books buys 'unsettling' first novel from Sarah Bernstein

Daunt Books Publishing has acquired debut novel The Coming Bad Days by poet and academic Sarah Bernstein.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-24 06:01:24 UTC ]
More news stories like this


The Art of Surviving a Move to New York

In 2013, I moved to New York City alone. I had just divorced and graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop. My first novel had been released—waiting for it had been my only remaining tether to a former life. With its release, my last connection to the functional adult world was severed and I was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-23 08:48:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Catherine Chung | 'Mathematics at its highest levels reminds me more of poetry than anything else'

In her first novel to be published in the UK, Catherine Chung tells the story of a gifted mathematician whose studies take her deep into her family history. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-23 07:02:53 UTC ]
More news stories like this


On the Darkness, Strangeness, and Unbridled Joy of Children’s Books

The first novel I published with a major house was about a murder I covered as a reporter when I was in my early twenties. The victim, who was my age, and lived in my neighborhood, disappeared in the winter and her body was found in the summer in a shallow grave in the woods […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-22 08:48:49 UTC ]
More news stories like this