#thomas black

ANIMAL ART OF THE DAY for World Turtle Day: an unusual tortoise portrait from 18th Century England, and its connection to Ottoman Turkey https://arthistoryanimalia.com/2023/05/23/animal-art-of-the-day-for-world-turtle-day-an-unusual-tortoise-portrait-from-18th-century-england-and-its-connection-to-ottoman-turkey/

Still Life With a Tortoise, 1743 possibly by Thomas Black (English, 1715-1777) oil on canvas, 74.9 x 96.5 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art

I’ve written in previous blogs about my liking for the French crime writer Pierre Lemaitre. The first of his books translated in English – ‘Alex’ – is superb and the subsequent releases, Irene and Camille, while not quite as strong are still extremely successful pieces of crime fiction.

Now comes another French writer – Michel Bussi, with his thriller ‘After The Crash’. Like Lemaitre, Bussi isn’t a new writer – ‘After The Crash’ is his sixth novel and its translation into English comes three years after it was originally published to huge success in France.

For all the praise and awards that the book has got, it’s disappointing that Bussi’s English publisher has rifled through all the coverage and found the one with the words ‘Stieg’ and ‘Larsson’ on the cover. Because, obviously, every European crime writer is pretty much the same, aren’t they? In fact, Bussi like Lemaitre comes to an English language audience as a fully-fledged novelist, rather than a debut writer finding their feet.

Unlike Larsson, Bussi doesn’t have the Scandi-noir interest in politics or a social element to his writing; there isn’t that Scandinavian interest in the environment and the role of nature in the storytelling. Instead, like Lemaitre, there is more interest in the way a story twists. Here there is the mystery of the identity of a baby who survives an air crash at the book’s heart; and a piece of evidence that means nothing at the time, but holds the answer to the riddle eighteen years later.

I haven’t read anything like enough French crime fiction to know if this is part of a wider trend, but certainly just as the TV show Engrenages (Spiral) stands comparison to The Killing, The Bridge, etc, and in a crime tradition of its own, so Bussi and Lemaitre do likewise against Stieg Larsson, et al.

Years ago, I went on a course at work about negotiation skills. Can't say I learnt much about negotiating (that's why I'm a writer rather than an agent) but I did pick up something very useful for my fiction. What the instructor showed us was some fascinating research about how we communicate. When we talk to someone, the words we say only ever forms a part of that communication -- I can't remember the precise numbers but it was tiny, 10% or something: far more important were the way the words were spoken (30%) and the body language that goes with it (60%). 

Whatever the exact figures, the point is a good one to remember when it comes to writing dialogue. Quite often authors give it the script-like treatment of just sticking to the words. But you're writing a book, not a film and by adding in the body language to a conversation, you're opening the exchange up on a whole new level. The body language that accompanies can suggest all kinds of things: it can serve to emphasise what is being said, or it do precisely the opposite, exposing what the person speaking is really thinking. 

So sure, get that skeleton of the conversation down in the first instance, but when you go back to rewrite, add in this extra layer of detail to really bring your dialogue to life.

I can't pretend to have too much knowledge of Japanese crime writing, but I came across 'The Devotion of Suspect X' in a bookshop by chance, and it was something of an unexpected delight. Unexpected because both the book jacket and quote were completely misleading -- the publisher lazily pitching him as 'The Japanese Stieg Larsson' when the author is a completely different sort of crime writer, and the designer choosing a picture of an intriguing looking woman when the main character is much older. And male. 

This book is what you'd call a howdunnit rather a whodunnit. The murder takes place in the opening chapter and so we immediately know the who and the why -- a confrontation between a violent ex-husband and a mother and daughter leaves the former dead. Enter the next door neighbour, Ishigami, who offers to deal with the situation and create a cast iron alibi for the women.

Ishigami is smart, super smart. What follows is a battle of wits between him and the detective, Kusanagi. Kusanagi's instinct of what happened is correct, but the alibi Ishigami has created for the women is seemingly watertight, unless the detective can find a way to unravel it. The result is a philosophical rather than a psychological thriller, a crossword puzzle of a plot and a quietly compelling read. 

If you're writing anything longer than a short story, one of the questions you have to ask yourself after a while is how you are going to divide the material down into chapters. How long should they be? There's no steadfast rule, and anyone who tells you otherwise is talking hogwash: the length should be what feels right for the story that you are trying to tell. But to help you decide where those lines should go, here are three pointers:

1. Think about plot: in terms of what a chapter 'is', a good rule of thumb is that it is a chunk of text that moves the story on. If that sense of going forwards isn't there, then you probably haven't got a chapter. Always remember that the chapter breaks should about story rather than scenes or chronology: there is nothing less exciting for a than a character going to sleep at the end of one chapter and waking up at the start of the next.

2. Always remember your reader: chapters are there to help signpost to them how the story is shaped: it's a way to help them navigate their way through the story. Be nice and help make their reading experience as user friendly as possible. 

3. Maintain your rhythm: how long your chapters are will create a particular feel. As a rule, the shorter they are, the more pace it will give the telling (though don't overdo: those super-short chapter books can be breathlessly banal). Whatever length you decide for your chapters, try to stick roughly to it -- it helps creates a rhythm to the narrative and when chapter lengths are all over the place, it can read in a very disjointed way.