Transworld Crime Writers' Lunch

One of the most enjoyable literary gatherings occurred recently when the Publicity Team of the Transworld imprint of Penguin Random House invited a group of London based literary critics, commentators and award judges to lunch.

Patsy Irwin and Alison Barrow of Transworld were excited about three specific thrillers, so they asked Karen Robinson [The Sunday Times], Barry Forshaw, Jon Coates [The Express], Jake Kerridge [The Telegraph], Mark Sanderson, and from Shots Magazine Mike Stotter, Mike Ripley, Ayo Onatade and I – to break bread with their authors Robert Goddard, Joseph Knox and Belinda Bauer.

Transworld Publishers were excited to see Robert Goddard pen his first [of what we term a] “full-on” Thriller where the narrative is terse, the prose fast and a one-sitting read which is now currently available in Hardcover / eBook.

So what’s Panic Room about?

High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of dubious background, secretive and alone, currently acting as housesitter.

The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable – and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn’t know it’s there. She’s too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she’s escaped.

But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking for the house’s owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur, Jack Harkness. Suddenly the whole world wants to know where his money has gone. Soon people are going to come knocking on the door, people with motives and secrets of their own, who will be asking Blake the sort of questions she can’t – or won’t – want to answer.

And will the panic room ever give up its secrets?

Read the Shots Review from Keith Miles HERE

There has been a buzz about award-winning Belinda Bauer’s upcoming thriller SNAP due for release on 17^th of May; and reading this intriguing premise, I’d advise making your diaries accordingly –

On a stifling summer's day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack's in charge, she said. I won't be long.

But she doesn't come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed for ever.

Three years later, mum-to-be Catherine wakes to find a knife beside her bed, and a note that says: I could have killed you.

Meanwhile Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother……..

Transworld are also very excited about their recent discovery Joseph Knox whose debut novel SIRENS we featured HERE and is currently available in Paperback.

The follow-up THE SMILING MAN continues the adventures of Detective Waits and is released shortly.

Disconnected from his history and careless of his future, Detective Aidan Waits has resigned himself to the night shift. An endless cycle of meaningless emergency calls and lonely dead ends. Until he and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter ‘Sutty’ Sutcliffe, are summoned to The Palace, a vast disused hotel in the centre of a restless, simmering city.

There they find the body of a man. He is dead.

And he is smiling.

The tags have been removed from the man’s clothes. His teeth filed down and replaced. Even his fingertips are not his own. Only a patch sewn into the inside of his trousers gives any indication as to who he was, and to the desperate last act of his life…

But even as Waits puts together the pieces of this stranger’s life, someone is sifting through the shards of his own.

When the mysterious fires, anonymous phone calls and outright threats escalate, he realises that a ghost from his own past haunts his every move.

And to discover the smiling man’s identity, he must finally confront his own.

We were all delighted to see the Talented Mr Ripley at Lunch; as we all knew he was taken ill over the Christmas Holiday; but he was in fine fettle and I recorded him in action, over lunch in one of his amusing asides discussing who is the best read crime-writer…

So we chatted with the authors, while wine was brought by Patsy Irwin and Alison Barrow to ensure our conversations were well lubricated; and soon it was time for Patsy to welcome us to lunch -

So after thanking Patsy Irwin and Alison Barrow for their hospitality in hosting a remarkable lunch; as well as grabbing our goody-bags with copies of all three books – we headed to a Pub, as later we had a Party to attend, The Michael Joseph [Imprint at Penguin Random House] Crime and Thriller Party in The Crypt by Trafalgar Square – which we will report from in due course.