“It
may sound surprising, but a joke and a crime novel work in very much the same
way. The comedian/writer leads their audience along the garden path. The
audience knows what's coming, or at least they think they do until they get hit
from a direction they were not expecting. “ – Mark Billingham
Born in England on this date in
1961, Billingham is a novelist, actor, television screenwriter and comedian
whose series of "Tom Thorne" crime novels are best sellers in that
genre. A comedian and screenwriter first,
Billingham added writing crime novels in 2001, creating Detective Inspector
Thorne for his debut novel Sleepyhead.
Since then, Thorne has been the central character in the majority of his
two dozen novels. 
Billingham is the only writer to twice
win the prestigious “Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award” –
in 2004 for Lazybones and in 2009 for
Death Message. His television writing has earned him the
Royal Television Society’s award "Best Entertainment Programme,” for What's
That Noise, and “Best Children’s Drama” (twice) for Knight School. And, he hosts UKTV’s crime podcast A Stab
In The Dark where each episode includes a discussion on a particular theme
from crime fiction and crime drama.
As
for his writing, he says, “I am trying to give the best performance possible in
400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment
doesn't necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to
get to the end of a book."
Share A Writer’s Moment
with a friend or forward the link: http://writersmoment.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment