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was a bond salesman and i was impressed not only by the quality of his writing but also by the way in which he had abandoned a lucrative career in investment banking to become a writer the other inspiration was the books of dick francis so much about them appealed to me the sense of pace the integrity of the main characters the way francis wove horse racing into wider stories and most of all the sheer enjoyment i felt in reading them so when i decided to write a book i tried to combine dick francis and michael lewis to write a dick francis in the city ak what about your education how did that lead you to seek employment in the financial sector mr i studied history at oxford university many historians at oxford ended up in the world of banking in the 1980s i don t think this is as ridiculous as it first sounds history when well taught teaches you to analyze cause and effect and to explain and persuade readers of your analysis a lot of understanding financial markets and businesses involves these skills i was also good at sums which probably helped ak your first novel to see print free to trade starred an ex olympic runner immersed in london s financial jungle whose lovely colleague is eventually pulled lifeless from the thames how did that book s publication come about mr free to trade was never supposed to be more than a bit of fun i was a bond trader writing little more than my initials on a dealing ticket so i decided it would be good for me to take up creative writing the first exercise i did was to write the first chapter of a novel so i wrote about a bond trader who gets involved in a massive trade that first goes wrong and then goes right i absolutely loved writing that chapter which became the first chapter of free to trade so i decided to forget about the exercises and just carry on with the book three years and three drafts later i had the novel a thriller set in the city i sent it off to a list of agents at that point i had moved to a venture capital firm and i knew all about rejection being responsible for rejecting business plans myself but to my surprise the second agent i sent it to the late carole blake accepted it with alacrity and set up auctions in the uk the u s and germany for the book when free to trade was published in 1995 it got to no 2 on the uk bestseller lists and was translated into 35 languages ak did you continue working in the financial sector while your writing career was taking off mr i tried to continue working in finance but there was a lot of publicity involved with the publication of free to trade and it wasn t really possible sadly i was a single father of two small girls at the time so the flexibility that writing offered came in very useful ak the adage write about what you know seems to apply as you followed your debut work with a string of successful financial thrillers can you tell us a little about that period mr in my opinion write what you know is a great help when you start out as an author but over time writing what you don t know begins to sound more interesting so for about 10 years after the publication of free to trade i searched for financial topics that interested me researched them and wrote thrillers based on them for example i wrote books about a virtual reality start up trading reality bond trading in brazil the marketmaker and the dot com boom and bust fatal error ak you seem to be a natural storyteller and my experience is that successful writers are usually also avid readers so can you please tell us a little about your own reading habits mr there s no doubt you can learn something of the craft of writing from reading how to books which have become ever more sophisticated but i m still learning how to write from writers who are better at it than i am i try to split my reading 50 50 between crime thrillers and as wide a range of fiction as i can find in 1994 i started writing notes on every novel i read the first was disclosure by michael crichton i try hard to avoid looking for what s wrong with a book it s too easy and teaches you nothing rather i look for what s right with it it s amazing what you can learn from a writer like john grisham for example with this frame of mind it s not just craft though i trust my instinct when writing or in particular when reading through drafts of my own books some things just feel right i try to figure out why but if i can t figure it out i will usually stick with whatever feels good even if it seems to break the rules of the craft ak archie laverick one of the main protagonists in your new operation berlin is like a number of characters you ve created a lover of libraries and of collecting books tell us a little about your own thoughts on literacy libraries and book collecting mr i have spoken about how i loved reading as a child like so many writers and readers i borrowed many of my childhood books from libraries i still enjoy the reference libraries i work in like the british library or the london library or the duxbury library in massachusetts i spend half my year in america editor s note michael ridpath is also married to an american book collecting is partly about libraries and beautiful leather bound books but frankly it s more like collecting football stickers as a child it s competitive there are arbitrary rules framing the collection it s expensive football stickers took far too high a share of my pocket money and it s essentially pointless this is especially true of archie s collection of early printed books where he is seeking one from each town that printed books in europe in the 15th century the more i have found out about book collectors the more this initial impression has been reinforced i have one not quite incunable a collection of sayings by valerius maximus printed in mainz in 1544 i hope that will be my only one otherwise i really will be in trouble ak until recently you may have been best known for your icelandic detective series featuring fish out of water magnus jonson a boston homicide cop seconded to the icelandic police force and introduced in 2010 s where the shadows lie you also penned the 2021 non fiction book writing in ice a crime writer s guide to iceland so tell us why does iceland appeal to you as a crime fiction backdrop mr iceland is an extraordinary country it s a mixture of old and new although the landscape looks ancient that is only because it is so new the lava fields the volcanoes the fjords were all created relatively recently in geological time its society too is a mixture of the old and the new it s a modern progressive highly educated and technologically sophisticated country yet every farm has a rock at the bottom of a field inhabited by elves the sagas of the norse settlers live on in the landscape and the minds of its inhabitants plus they have a really well developed sense of irony the problem with writing about iceland is that everything that seems so extraordinary to a foreigner seems just normal to say your average icelandic detective which is why my man magnus left iceland when he was 12 moved to america and became a homicide detective there so when he returns to iceland partly to investigate the unsolved murder of his father the icelandic expression glöggt er gests augad applies clear as a guest s eye ak you started out writing finance world thrillers set in the 1990s which many readers might now consider a historical period and then went on to concoct modern icelandic mysteries but amid the magnus jonson series you penned a couple of spy novels 2013 s traitor s gate and 2015 s shadows of war starring a well educated and well connected young englishman conrad de lancey and in 2021 you delivered the diplomat s wife a standalone that finds an older woman visiting europe in 1979 hoping to solve a mystery that remains from her days as a foreign service officer s wife four decades before now in your mid 60s you have begun this foreign correspondent series would it be fair to say you ve come full circle as far as your time period interests are concerned mr from my perspective there isn t a circle i like to write about foreign worlds which require some research and some effort to understand not only the setting but the people in it this could be the financial world in the 1990s iceland in the 2010s or europe in the 1930s and i like to write about foreigners or outsiders or expatriates in these worlds ak where did the idea originate for operation berlin s detective duo esme carmichael and archie laverick and how did it then gestate mr i like the 1930s and i liked the idea of a detective solving crimes around the capitals of europe in the 1930s but who should this detective be i came across a book last call at the hotel imperial 2022 by deborah cohen about the young men and women who left america in the 1920s and 30s to travel to europe to become foreign correspondents people like ernest hemingway john gunther bill shirer and dorothy thompson the women in cohen s book particularly grabbed my interest my detective could be a young woman with no money and a one way ticket to europe determined to find a story to make her name that was esme but i decided she should have a sidekick or partner someone different to her british then and a man i mentioned earlier that my childhood was in a yorkshire village perhaps this man could be a minor landowner in nidderdale with shell shock i have long been fascinated by how in the 20s and 30s millions of men were walking around london and paris and berlin with shell shock no one mentioned it everyone knew it archie has it as a historian writing military biographies he has a reason to spend time in european capitals and a reason to look for research help from someone like esme ak your new novel contains a vast array or perhaps cabal would be a better word of characters beyond your two main protagonists we have supporting as well as secondary players and walk ons i applaud how deftly they were each portrayed they stood upright distinct on the page so how difficult was it to manage such a large cast but still keep the novel pacey mr good characterization in thrillers or crime novels is really difficult you don t have time to stop the action for a couple of pages to explain the backstories of newly introduced characters i m still learning how to do it it s one of the things i focus on when i m taking notes of other writers books somerset maugham is brilliant at it there are certain techniques pick a trait and repeat it make a character s motivation clear and repeat that show a character who seems to be one person but actually has a second hidden personality that is revealed repeat that and try to do all this in chunks of single sentences rather than single paragraphs i believe that repetition is important when describing people or places after the third repetition the reader feels as if they are familiar with the character or the place they recognize them but i still have more to learn here ak you ve been quite a busy guy operation berlin is just out this month but you have also made a novella sequel operation lost hours available to download for free here and next year will bring us the sophomore foreign correspondent novel operation vienna can you tell us a little about how you see this series shaping up in the future mr it turns out i really enjoy spending my mornings in a big city in europe with archie and esme i have just finished lounging about the cafés in montparnasse in paris in 1932 and i am starting to research moscow in 1933 there was all sorts of fascinating stuff going on in russia in 1933 i m happy i think i ll be doing this for a while ak finally what recent books have passed over your desk that you have found interesting mr i recently read luke jennings s latest book medusa the latest in his killing eve series the inspiration for bbc america s popular 2018 2022 spy drama of that same name it s brilliant i love his wit and the way he deals with the extraordinary relationship between his two heroines eve and oxana who would have thought that a nanny on a super yacht could be so dangerous it s the first of the series i have read i need to go back to the beginning posted by ali karim at 10 23 am 0 comments labels ali karim interviews thursday april 16 2026 dagger designees the british crime writers association today released its longlists of contenders for the 2026 dagger awards in 11 categories coming next in this process will be the revelation of shortlists on may 28 followed by an announcement of the year s dagger winners in july kaa gold dagger carnival of lies by d v bishop macmillan don t forget me little bessie by james lee burke orion king of ashes by s a cosby headline the death of us by abigail dean hemlock press not quite dead yet by holly jackson michael joseph quantum of menace by vaseem khan zaffre the frozen river by ariel lawhon river swift press the rush by beth lewis viper a voice in the night by simon mason riverrun the good father by liam mcilvanney zaffre hotel ukraine by martin cruz smith simon schuster uk the art of a lie by laura shepherd robinson mantle a case of life and limb by sally smith raven ian fleming steel dagger the midnight king by tariq ashkanani viper the ghostwriter by julie clark zaffre king of ashes by s a cosby headline the big empty by robert crais simon schuster uk the death of us by abigail dean hemlock press the chemist by a a dhand hq fiction a dead draw by robert dugoni thomas mercer a sting in her tale by mark ezra no exit press burying jericho by william hussey zaffre such quiet girls by noelle ihli pan the good father by liam mcilvanney zaffre we are all guilty here by karin slaughter harpercollins alcs gold dagger for non fiction the devil takes bitcoin by jake adelstein scribe shadow of the bridge the delphi murders and the dark side of the american heartland by áine cain and kevin greenlee pegasus crime saffie by david collins silvertail the spy in the archive how one man tried to kill the kgb by gordon corera william collins the murder game by john curran harpercollins collins crime club the cia book club the best kept secret of the cold war by charlie english william collins murderland by caroline fraser fleet the einstein vendetta hitler mussolini and a true story of murder by thomas harding michael joseph a spy in the family by paul henderson and david gardner mirror the cleveland street scandal by neil root the history press that dark spring by susannah stapleton picador the illegals by shaun walker profile historical dagger a granite silence by nina allan riverrun spoiler s prey by robin blake severn house benecula by graeme macrae burnet polygon the mourning necklace by kate foster mantle the frozen river by ariel lawhon swift press the rush by beth lewis viper barvick falls by rob mcinroy tippermuir the devil s draper by donna moor fly on the wall press gunner by alan parks baskerville cairo gambit by s w perry corvus the art of a lie by laura shepherd robinson mantl...