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Comment from the book world in September 2015

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September 2015

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Crime writers challenged by forensic science

20 September 2015

‘When you have a new development in forensic science, as a crime writer your first thought is how do I work my way around that?

Because these new developments do make for a slightly more complicated environment for us to be working in. If you look back 20 years even, what was available in terms of evidential analysis was really quite low level. The writer had a lot of leeway and could leave forensic traces that were never going to be picked up on.

If you're going to use the forensic stuff you have to get it right. Readers are very sophisticated and very well informed. If you get it wrong it's not just the experts who will haul you over the coals, it's the readers.'

Val McDermid, whose latest book is Splinter the Silence, in the Sunday Telegraph

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A Man Booker shortlisting for an Irish Laureate

7 September 2015

'Well, it's more fun the second time around! Actually, the first time I was really delighted, and sort of vindicated. But when it happened, I was working all the time to try and pay the bills, and it took a walloping two months out of my working life. I couldn't write a damn thing, so that was a bit frightening...

The laureateship meant an awful lot more to me than any prize I got, because it happened at home. It takes Ireland a while to accept one of its writers, because there's a very dissenting tradition in Irish writing. Writers are never telling wonderful stories about Ireland, they're telling interesting stories about Ireland, and Ireland doesn't necessarily appreciate that. So for me to be accepted, for a female voice - with all the anxiety there is about the female voice in Ireland - for that somehow to dissolve, and this symbolic thing of the laureateship, is just lovely.'

Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and the Booker Prize-winning The Gathering, in the Observer