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Mulholland’s Jan competition

These are the Terms & Conditions for our January 2017 competition. Head over to our Twitter page to find out more.

1.              This is a prize draw for Mulholland UK titles published in January 2017. To enter, please quote the competition tweet, mentioning which book of the selection you’d like to read in particular. There will be one winner.

2.            The winner will be selected at random from the entries received in accordance with these terms and conditions by the Mulholland team, whose decision will be final.

3.           The winner may see their entry posted on the Mulholland (hereinafter the ’Company’) website and on other websites and social media accounts.

4.           There is no purchase necessary to enter.

5.            The prize draw opens at 11:00 am BST on 26th January 2017 and closes at 17:00 pm BST on 27th January 2017. Any entries received outside these specified times and dates will not be eligible for entry into the competition.

6.            The prize draw is open to anyone aged 16 or over in the UK except employees of the Company, their families, or anyone professionally connected to the competition either themselves or through their families.  If the winner is under 18 years of age, the winner will be asked to have his or her guardian complete waivers, consent forms and/or other documentation as prerequisite for being awarded the prize.  

7.            Only one entry per person allowed. Second or subsequent entries will be disqualified. Entries will not be accepted via agents, third parties or in bulk.

8.            The Company is not responsible for contacting or forwarding prizes to entrants who provide unclear or incomplete information or for entries lost, misdirected, delayed or destroyed.

9.            The Company reserves the right to alter the prizes or cancel the prize draw without notice.  No cash alternatives to prizes will be provided.

10.          The winner’s name will be published on the Mulholland Twitter feed within one week of the competition’s closure.

11.          The Company will make available the name and county of the winner to anyone who requests this information by writing to the following address: Mulholland, Hodder & Stoughton, Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0DZ.

12.          The email addresses of entrants may be shared with companies within the Hachette group of companies but will not be shared with other companies outside the Hachette group.  It will be used by the Hachette companies to send you news about books, products and promotions.  You will be given the option of opting out in those emails if you don’t want to receive any further news.

13.          By entering the prize draw you agree to be bound by these terms and conditions.

14.          This competition is being organised by Mulholland, Hodder & Stoughton, Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0DZ.

15.          These terms and conditions and any disputes or claims (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of these terms and Conditions shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of England, whose courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction.

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When Perfection is Bad - Marcus Sedgwick

Ahead of publication of Mister Memory, author Marcus Sedgwick looks at the role of memory and the real-life case of Solomon Shereshevsky, the man who could never forget.

All of us, at some time or other, have wished we had a better memory. How frustrating it is, we feel, when we can’t find the exact word we’re hunting for. And how wonderful it would be to learn a foreign language more easily. (If you’re approaching or beyond middle age, it’s easy to ascribe the failings of our memory to increasing years, forgetting that as children we were just as prone to forget things.) Many of us may also have entertained a brief, hypothetical fantasy in which our memories are perfect – how easy life would be then! But a moment’s further thought and we start to wonder if it would really be so great to have a foolproof memory.

 What if you could never forget not only the good things in your life, but all the bad ones too? The accidents, arguments, embarrassments; in brief, the traumas both emotional and physical that inevitably accompany any human life? We might think that no one has to suffer this torment, and that’s it no more than an academic point, but there does exist one case study of just this phenomenon. In the early part of the 20th century, Russian psychologist Alexander Luria investigated the case of a man with a remarkable mind for over twenty years. By the end of this time, Luria concluded that his patient had no discernible boundaries to his memory. His name was Solomon Shereshevsky. In the early tests, Luria tested Shereshevsky with grids of numbers. After gazing at them for a minute or two, the mnemonist would repeat the numbers back, hundreds at a time. That’s not so amazing. What was amazing is that 20 years later, Shereshevsky could repeat back any or all of the grids he’d been given on any given day, in addition to what Luria was wearing, what the weather was like, what room they were in at the time, and so on.

 Critically, following the thought of how it would really be to have a perfect memory, Shereshevsky had a difficult life. He had trouble understanding people, their emotions and complexities. (He had face blindness too incidentally – one ‘flaw’ in his memory?) He had trouble with relationships, he had trouble holding down a job for any length of time, always taking things too literally and unable to understand nuance.

 The idea that to be sane we need a balance between memory and forgetting is an old one – Nietzsche had arrived at this conclusion long before Shereshevsky’s time, and indeed, a little thought shows us that we can neither function with no memory at all, nor one that is perfect.

Mister Memory is out on the 26th January.

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The Perfect Sound with Sam Hawken

Do you listen to music at the same time as reading a book? What about when you’re writing - are you thinking of lyrics, too? Walk Away author Sam Hawken reveals the soundtrack to his book.

Whenever I’m working up a new book, whether it’s during the concept phase or during outlining, I start making a playlist to go with it.  Eventually I start calling it a “soundtrack,” but it’s really only a playlist.  I can only imagine how much I’d have to pay in licensing fees to make an honest-to-goodness soundtrack for every book I’ve written or published.  But whatever the case, Walk Away is no exception.

The soundtracks never come together in exact order. They start with a seed song or two that capture a specific character or moment.  Walk Away started with the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” because I knew the book would climax with a slam-bang action sequence, and when I thought of it “Sabotage” leapt right into my head. Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” followed quickly thereafter, signifying a critical moment toward the end of the book following the action, but you’ll notice it isn’t here.  About midway through the editing process on the book, I realized Willie Nelson’s “The Maker” better fit the characters in the scene and the message I wanted to convey.  So Dylan was out and Willie was in.  I consider that a good trade.

It’s rare that I call out a song in the text itself, but occasionally I want so much for a reader to hear what I hear that I’ll name-check the artist or the title so the scene unspools as I imagine it. Such was the case with the Kid Rock’s “Bawitdaba,” which is something of a douchebag anthem, but irresistibly catchy. It seemed like the perfect song to accompany Camaro beating the holy living s— out of someone, and so you’ll find direct reference to it in the book.  Sorry for being so pushy.

Many of the songs you’ll find on this playlist become totally obvious in the context of reading the book.  They are indicative of a place — like “Going to California,” or “All the Small Things” — or they attach directly to a character.  I don’t think anyone can read Walk Away and not realize how George Thorogood’s “Who Do You Love” connects to the book’s primary antagonist, Lukas Collier. Similarly, when the playlist opens with Larkin Poe and “Trouble in Mind,” you know that’s Camaro to the bone.

I chose some songs because they spoke the same language as Walk Away. Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” is a sorrowful tale of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship, and Walk Away addresses this issue head-on.  The victimized woman in “Better Man” has a far less salvific fate than Camaro’s sister, Annabel, but we can hope.  And when you hear Tracy Chapman lament in “At This Point in My Life,” you know you’re hearing the interior voice of Camaro more clearly than she would ever allow.  It is in these and many ways that I prime myself to tell the story I want to tell, the way I want to tell it.  If there’s an emotion to strike, sometimes there’s need of a boost to get there.

Of all the songs on the playlist, though, I think the one that communicates a sense of hope better than anything is the closing track from Everclear, “Santa Monica.”  In Walk Away, Camaro goes through a serious grinder, not only physically, but emotionally.  “Santa Monica” talks about coming into your own in a way you haven’t before, and I like to think the final moments of Walk Away convey that to the reader.

Enjoy listening once you’ve read.  Tell me what you think.

Listen to the playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/smlhwkn/playlist/7wVRwDeTzVWza6CWxsuZ98

Walk Away is out on 26th January. 

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Sam Hawken’s recipe for Camaro

Ahead of the publication of Walk Away, author Sam Hawken has put together a recipe for his bad-ass heroine Camaro Espinoza . . . 

I’m asked a lot of questions about Camaro. Where does she come from? How did she become who she is? What will happen to her next? But it wasn’t until recently when someone asked me: what goes into making a character like Camaro?

 If I had to turn Camaro into a recipe, there are three main ingredients which make her who she is, and explain a lot about the path she takes.

 1.      Shane. Jack Schaefer’s classic 1949 novel — originally published as a serial in 1946 under the title, Rider from Nowhere — is the ultimate “lone hero” story.  Everything you’ve ever read or seen about a mysterious figure who wanders into the lives of people in need and metes out justice stems from Schaefer’s archetype. Long seen as a template for masculinity, it occurred to me that fresh life could be breathed into this 70-year-old idea by switching genders and exploring the same territory from the perspective of a woman. Women are no less fierce or flawed or brave as men, but they rarely get a chance to demonstrate these qualities without being labeled as action figures in the shape of a woman, an accusation which would never be leveled at a man in the same role.

2.      Pain. Camaro is many things, but she is defined most strongly by her pain. It’s apparent to everyone she meets, and in everything she does, that she has experienced trauma in her life sufficient to turn her away from engagement with people except at the most basic levels. She wants money, she wants sex, she wants temporary respite in violence or alcohol. We know from looking at soldiers coming home from our 21st century wars that trauma can run deeper and be more profound than we ever suspected before. And as we piece together the story of Camaro’s life, we see she has been hurt time and again, with the wars she fought only serving to hammer her pain into place so firmly that she may never escape. People may think she doesn’t feel, or she doesn’t care, but the truth is she feels too much, and it hurts her to take on the mantle of hero even as she can’t resist the call toward justice.

3.      Death. Early on, as I examined the idea of redefining Shane for a new era, I reflected that Camaro has done something to herself to compensate for her pain, and to assist her in her impulses to do good: she has learned to be a weapon. In The Night Charter, we saw Camaro trying to disconnect from violence by fishing and leading a simple life, but she was only a year distant from an incident where she killed multiple people in New York City.  Similarly, when she was needed, she took up arms without a second thought and turned Miami into a war zone. From an early age, Camaro learned to fight with her fists and feet, then graduated to guns and knives and every other form of self-defense you can think of.  She has switched off the part of her that might hesitate to strike the killing blow, so long as she feels what she’s doing is right. That’s a terrifying prospect for anyone who might underestimate her.

 Of course, there’s more to Camaro than these three things. She has facets we have yet to explore, and in Walk Away and books beyond we’ll come to see some of those hidden parts of her. But when it comes down to the very basics of her character, she is a wounded warrior, a killer, with a deep sense of what is just and what is not. Everything else comes second.

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Five favourite horror movies from debut Mulholland author Scott Reardon

Delve into the psyche of Scott Reardon, author of The Prometheus Man:

What are your five favourite horror films?

1. The Exorcist

The Exorcist has the best setup of any horror film. It uses the decency of the characters and the stark realism of the dialogue and the cinematography to suck you in. Father Karras’s goodness, guarded as it is, is something you feel just by looking at his face. He’s suffering over the death of his mother, and he’s questioning his faith in God. He represents most of us, I think, in that he sees how the existence of God gives life meaning, and yet he simply can’t get himself to believe. He has a depth I always wished to see in a priest when I was a kid—but never did.

It is against this backdrop—of a man searching for and failing to find the height of human existence—that Reagan’s possession acquires its moral significance and thus its moral horror.

2. The Shining

I’m not proud of this, but as a husband and a father, I have moments where I connect with Jack Torrance. Wrestling my two-year-old son, Scotty, into some clothes is like fighting a very motivated Chucky doll. On top of which, he has patented a new fighting style where the only body parts attacked are the eyes and the nipples.

The Shining has always had a place in my heart because it shows a twenty-nine-year-old man’s id. And it shows his id at the exact point in his life—he’s supporting his family, trying to jumpstart a career—when responsibility demands this id be suppressed. Jack is interesting because he’s honest, and honesty is so fascinating to us it’s almost like a magic trick. Plus—and this is the scary thing—there’s a part of us that agrees with him. Something to think about the next time you see friends avidly discussing nap schedules and earnestly agreeing with a spouse who believes conversation should only be about “nice”, “positive” things.

I also love the movie second-hand—through my dad. You should see his eyes light up demonically when Mr. Grady says to Jack of Danny and Wendy: perhaps they need “a good talking to”, perhaps “a bit more.”

3. Friday the 13th Part 2, Part 4 and Part 6

What I love about the Friday the 13th series is how shallow and gleefully amoral the characters are. Whereas The Exorcist has an elevating moral center, Friday the 13th has no such encumbrance. In Part 4, a medical examiner attempts to seduce a nurse next to Jason’s dead body, and when she leaves in disgust, he promptly turns on a steamy aerobics video—casually transitioning to the next source of stimulus. The world would never tolerate such unfeeling honesty today.

Part 6 is probably my favorite. In one night, Tommy Jarvis, the main character, digs up a grave, defies local law enforcement, breaks out of jail, evades the local sheriff, makes out with the sheriff’s daughter and then kills a monster in a lake of fire. That’s pretty much my bucket list. I don’t want to go see giraffes in Africa or do yoga in India. I want to break things, promises, my mother’s heart, the law.

And piece of advice: if there’s a better way to make a woman fall in love with you than to defy her father, I don’t know of it.

4. An American Werewolf in London

My wife and I watch this movie maybe once every four years. And, without fail, every time the two main characters walk through the misty English moors and wind up at the creepy tavern with the inbred-seeming villagers, my wife turns to me and says, “We have to go to northern England. You would love it up there.”

5. The Descent

Six women go down into a cave and encounter something human and yet inhuman.

You spend the first hour of the movie with these women, and it’s impossible not to like each one. They’re in their late twenties/early thirties, figuring out careers, relationships. They’re on the cusp of becoming what they’ll ultimately be—for the rest of their lives—and for potentially one last moment, they’re girly and cutting loose and almost pulling off being carefree. Watching the movie made me remember how nice that period was in my own life.

And then they go down into the cave. And then everything changes.

Debut Mulholland author Scott Reardon is a graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern Law. He currently works at a venture capital firm in Los Angeles. THE PROMETHEUS MAN is being published on 26th January 2017.

This article originally ran in Crime Spree Magazine.

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Behind the scenes of The Highway Kind

Read about the origins of The Highway Kind: Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drivers and Dark Roads, containing original stories by Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, C. J. Box, Diana Gabaldon, Ace Atkins & more...

The book's theme has morphed a bit since I originally conceived of it back in 2013.  At first, it was to be a collection of automobile-centric crime fiction tales in which each story would feature a different car.  My thought was that we'd have nifty pen and ink sketches before each story representing each car.  I originally sold the idea to Little Brown based on such a proposal, but as Josh Kendall and I batted the idea around, we decided that such an approach might limit our prospective audience. The last thing we wanted was something that was considered a niche market book, so I broadened the theme to "cars, driving and the road."  It seemed much more accessible to a wide audience. The experience of driving is something that many of us can relate to - and it resonates on so many levels.  

I've enlisted what I think is a pretty amazing and diverse list of authors, many from the crime fiction world, but others, such as Diana Gabaldon, Willy Vlautin, Kelly Braffet and Luis Urrea from other genres.  I'm fortunate to be in the middle of things as a bookseller in a very well-established independent crime bookstore, and have developed friendships with loads of writers over my 20-year tenure.  That certainly helped to strengthen my case when pitching the book, and I'd done an earlier anthology for Akashic Books that did quite well in its small universe.

When the stories started coming in it quickly became clear that this was going to be a pretty unique and special anthology.  Some of the stories are classic road stories, while others are definitely on the more existential side.  Quite a few of the pieces have a distinctly confessional feel.  As I point out in the intro, many of us spend a significant portion of our lives alone in our cars.  They represent our freedom AND our isolation, and in some ways they facilitate our secret lives..  I hope UK readers will enjoy the collection.  It sure was a privilege being a part of it.

The Highway Kind is out today. Discover it now.

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Hap and Leonard ride again, and again

Author Joe R Lansdale gives us a run-down on what makes his characters Hap and Leonard so unique:

Quite by accident I discovered Hap Collins, and quite on purpose a lot of him is me. He has ceased to age for the moment, and I have not, but our DNA, except for Hap’s fortunate ability to stay middle-aged for as long as he likes, remains quite similar. Leonard, considerably less like me, also remains younger than me, and continually ornery.  

         SAVAGE SEASON, the first Hap and Leonard novel was meant to be a stand-alone, but Hap came back to me later with more adventures. I didn‘t fight it. They have been at it over 25 years now and are still going strong.  

         I used a lot of my background for Hap. He’s white, heterosexual and has a lot of liberal leanings. I don’t have a gay, black, conservative friend exactly like Leonard, but I have many friends, white and black, similar to him, though at the time of creation a gay, black Republican was as rare as hens with dentures. These days they are still rare, but nowhere like they once were. Times change.  

         Since I first began the series, thankfully, gay rights have been vastly expanded, and there’s a generally less hostile response to the idea of gays in the mainstream, and though racism has not disappeared, it does seem to be on the run, which was not the case when Hap and Leonard first appeared.

         That doesn’t mean things are rosy, and therefore the books continue to deal with cultural and political situations without them becoming the all purpose reasons for the stories.

         What I can say about these guys is they have gone through a number of changes. Characters in the series have come and gone, some violently. Hap and Leonard have worked their way up from poverty to lower middle-class positions. They have done the jobs I did as I made my way in the world. Field work, aluminum chair factories, etc., and now they work somewhat regularly as private investigators, which is not totally surprising, as their stories always had a certain kinship with the private eye tale.

         I love these guys. I do enjoy taking a break and writing other novels, some that might be considered more serious, but on the whole, I have said as much culturally, socially, and politically in their entertainments as I might have said in more serious tomes.

         But the real reason I write about Hap and Leonard is because they are as real to me as some people I know, and a lot more interesting than a number of them.

         Thank goodness for those guys. They have been good to me.

         I never know when Hap and Leonard will show up with new adventures, but when they do, I’m always here to listen and record them for the reader.  

Savage Season and Mucho Mojo are out on the 20th October in both paperback and ebook.   

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Catch up with DS McAvoy in FIRE OF LIES, out tomorrow.

Pre-order: http://amzn.to/2dDSBm5

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David Mark on the DS McAvoy series - Hodder & Stoughton

David Mark talks about his crime series featuring Hull detective DS McAvoy.

FIRE OF LIES, a gripping new short story in the DS McAvoy series is out this Thursday! Whilst you’re waiting, watch author David Mark talk about the series.

Pre-order: http://amzn.to/2dDSBm5

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Revolver: the past and present

Duane Swierczynski’s new novel, Revolver, starts with the murder of two policemen in Philadelphia, 1965, and follows the repercussions through the generations. We asked Duane about his inspiration, research, and how it feels when reality starts to reflect fiction...

REVOLVER was inspired in part by your forebear, Joseph T Swierczynski, who was a Philadelphia cop – how much did you know about him?

A bunch of years ago I saw a reference online about a police officer with my same last name who’d been killed in the line of duty back in March 1919. I wondered if we could be related.

Then two years ago, just as I was plotting REVOLVER, a distant cousin reached out to me — Captain Steve Swierczynski of the Cherry Hill, NJ police department. Turns out, he’s the great-grandson of that fallen officer. So we met up at an Italian restaurant a few blocks away from where Officer Joseph T. Swierczynski had been gunned down while trying to save a guy from a group of gangsters. After lunch, we walked over to the former bar (now a pizza joint) where it had happened. The tiled entranceway, Steven told me, was where Joseph T. had bled out and died. It was an an incredibly powerful moment, and one I very much wanted to replicate in the novel. The idea that you could reach out and touch the past, in some way.

Someday I’d like to write a proper nonfiction book about Joseph T.’s murder. It’s an incredible story, with all kinds of criminal (and political) intrigue. You can find his page on the Officer Down Memorial site right here:

https://www.odmp.org/officer/13057-policeman-joseph-t-swierczynski

The novel is set in three time periods, 1965, 1995 and 2015, tracing the impact over the years of one key moment in the sixties, where our main character’s grandfather, police officer Stan Walczak, and his black partner, are gunned down. How did you manage the research and what was the most surprising thing you discovered?

I used to be a journalist, so I approached the 1965 portion as if I were doing a magazine story about the double murder. I interview police officers who worked the streets of Philly back in the mid-1960s, including local legend Michael J. Chitwood, who’s now the head of the Upper Darby, PA police department. I also read a ton of newspaper and magazine pieces as well as books set in and around that time period. I must have spent six months reading and absorbing. I knew I’d gone off the deep end when I realized that a key song in the book (a novelty polka called “Who Stole the Keeshka?”) had been recorded just a few blocks away from the scene of the Columbia Avenue Riots (a key scene early in the book) and I was excited FOR DAYS. That’s when I knew it was time to step away from the research and actually start writing the damned novel.

The other time periods were easier, having lived through them as an adult.

The murders happen just after some serious rioting breaks out in the black area of town, which the (mostly white) cops treat pretty harshly. There are – unfortunately – some obvious parallels right now. Was it disturbing to see things like Ferguson happening as you were writing? Depressing? Are there differences between now and then?

I was just starting the first draft when Ferguson happened, and it freaked me out quite a bit — this was just a week after the 50th anniversary of the Columba Avenue Riots here in Philly, and that’s the scene I was working on. When I was researching the riots I thought, “Thank God we’re past all of this violence and lunacy.” And then comes Ferguson. And Baltimore.

Both of which had a big impact on the writing of REVOLVER. I’ll admit that at first when I heard of the Black Lives Matter movement, I got caught up in the semantics. The liberal in me thought, “well, sure… but don't all lives matter?” And I had a character in the novel say much the same thing. But I quickly realized I was missing the point — that society acts as if black lives don’t matter. All the time.

So I guess if there’s something positive about all of this unrest, it’s that we’re finally talking about race in a very public way. We’re finally having a national debate about America’s original sin. I just hope it leads to more empathy, understanding, and real change.

And of course then we had the tragic news from Baton Rouge, in which police officers were targeted, just before the book was published. It must be really strange to see that… real life is real life, and fiction is fiction, but did the events make you feel any differently about the book, or indeed about the history of race relations that is part of what it follows?

Reading about Dallas and Baton Rogue was horrifying. But knowing that I’d written a novel about police murders and race made it all the more surreal for me. I kept hearing that line from TRUE DETECTIVE in my head: “Time is a flat circle.” God, I hope that’s not the case. I’d like the next generation to enjoy a kinder world than the one we’re living in now.

I guess if I have any regrets, it's that the book doesn’t cover 2016 — I would have loved to explore some of the characters reactions to what’s going on now. I know I’m not done writing about Audrey, the novel’s main protagonist. So maybe I’ll have that chance someday.

Find out more about Revolver, and read an extract, here.

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Pieter Posthumus: The Early Years

As the third Pieter Posthumus novel, DEADLY SECRETS, publishes in the UK, writing team Britta Bolt tell us more about the early years of their leading man...

Our lead character was born in the small Dutch town of Krommenie, about 15 miles northeast of Amsterdam, in 1964. He grew up a Roman Catholic, at a time when Dutch society divided itself into ‘zuilen’ or pillars: Protestants and Roman Catholics led separate lives, co-existing but not stepping on each other’s toes. Towns would have a Catholic school and a Protestant school, a Catholic butcher and a Protestant butcher, and so on, through every social structure. Even today hospitals, universities and even TV stations can trace their origins back to a confessional ‘zuil’. This co-existence did not necessarily mean tolerance, merely acceptance, and as a Catholic in the north, the young Posthumus was very much in a minority—aspects of his childhood that have left their mark, even though he is no longer religious.

His mother had been a primary school teacher, but gave up work when PP came along; his father was a headmaster at a local secondary school, and he had an angelic, golden-haired younger brother, Willem, whom PP adored, and who did everything right. Posthumus senior had been a science teacher, but the house was filled with art books, as painting, particularly the Dutch Old Masters were a passion of his. It was a sedate, secure, very conventional childhood out of which Posthumus burst in late adolescence like an angry pimple. For a year or two after leaving school he went wild in Krommenie, hanging out with a group of bikers and going through a brief small-town punk phase.  

Then in 1984, having just turned 20, Pieter Posthumus shot out of provincial life, and landed in the big, bad city of Amsterdam...

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The Genesis of Hunt the Dragon - by Ralph Pezzullo

Like other SEAL Team Six thrillers, the idea for Hunt the Dragon started with a comment by my co-author Don Mann about a top-secret mission he went on to North Korea as a member of SEAL Team Six.  The real mission took place years ago. As Don talked about it, I started to imagine what would happen if members of SEAL Team Six led by our fictional character Tom Crocker were called upon to deploy to North Korea today, and if so, what might be a likely cause.

Don and I try to keep our books as believable and up-to-date as possible, so my first task was to research North Korea. I learned that the totalitarian regime that has ruled the country of twenty-five million people since the 1950s is a self-described revolutionary and socialist state. Political power is highly centralized in one party and thirty-three-year-old Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un of the Kim family heads all major governing structures – as did his father Kim Jong-il and his grandfather Kim Il-sung before him.

All three dictators followed a strategic policy known as Songun (or military first), which explains why a country with a per capita GNP of $1,800 according to the CIA World Factbook maintains the world’s fourth largest standing army.

A friend in the US intelligence community explained that Songun is derived from the Maoist idea that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” And it’s the primary reason North Korea funds a very aggressive nuclear arms program, whose stated aim is to develop nuclear missiles capable of striking the mainland United States. In international terms, said one State Department expert I spoke to, Songun is a threatening posture towards the rest of the world so that other countries have to take impoverished North Korea seriously. Internally, it assures the Kim family will maintain political control over the government by passing on the title of Supreme Leader of the Korean Peoples’ Army.

I also learned that economically North Korea is classified as a low-income country. A three-year famine that began in 1995 resulted in an estimated two million deaths. According to Human Rights Watch North Koreans are “some of the most brutalized people in the world.” Amnesty International estimates that thousands of people are executed annually for political crimes and as many as 200,000 North Koreans are housed in six large political prisoner camps where they’re forced to perform slave labor.

Armed with this understanding, I tried to imagine a credible contemporary scenario that would cause the president of the United States to authorize a top-secret SEAL Team Six mission into North Korea. Since the Kim Jong-un regime runs a criminal unit called Office 39 that specializes in counterfeiting money, stealing nuclear and missile technology, and, even, kidnapping scientific experts, I came up with a plot that involves the kidnapping of a US missile guidance system special in Switzerland, coupled with escalating threats to the US from North Korea.

Now that we had a threat and a ticking clock, Don and I talked through the technical logistics of how a SEAL mission to North Korea might work – specifically what would go into the planning, how the SEALs could deploy into North Korea undetected, and the kinds of weapons and equipment they would use. Then, because the unexpected usually happens on military missions of this kind, I threw a big wrench in the works to see how Crocker and his men would react.

That’s some of the research and thinking that went into the creation of Hunt the Dragon.

Hunt The Dragon is out now in ebook, and in trade paperback on 16th June. 

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Hap and Leonard Ride Again, And Again by Joe R. Lansdale

Quite by accident I discovered Hap Collins, and quite on purpose a lot of him is me. He has ceased to age for the moment, and I have not, but our DNA, except for Hap’s fortunate ability to stay middle-aged for as long as he likes, remains quite similar. Leonard, considerably less like me, also remains younger than me, and continually ornery.  

Savage Season, the first Hap and Leonard novel was mean to be a stand alone, but Hap came back to me later with more adventures. I didn‘t fight it. They have been at it over 25 years now and are still going strong.  

I used a lot of my background for Hap. He’s white, heterosexual and has a lot of liberal leanings. I don’t have a gay, black, conservative friend exactly like Leonard, but I have many friends, white and black, similar to him, though at the time of creation a gay, black Republican was as rare as hens with dentures. These days they are still rare, but nowhere like they once were. Times change.   Since I first began the series, thankfully, gay rights have been vastly expanded, and there’s a generally less hostile response to the idea of gays in the mainstream, and though racism has not disappeared, it does seem to be on the run, which was not the case when Hap and Leonard first appeared. That doesn’t mean things are rosy, and therefore the books continue to deal with cultural and political situations without them becoming the all purpose reasons for the stories. 

What I can say about these guys is they have gone through a number of changes. Characters in the series have come and gone, some violently. Hap and Leonard have worked their way up from poverty to lower middle-class positions. They have done the jobs I did as I made my way in the world. Field work, aluminum chair factories, etc., and now they work somewhat regularly as private investigators, which is not totally surprising, as their stories always had a certain kinship with the private eye tale.

I love these guys. I do enjoy taking a break and writing other novels, some that might be considered more serious, but on the whole, I have said as much culturally, socially, and politically in their entertainments as I might have said in more serious tomes. 

But the real reason I write about Hap and Leonard is because they are as real to me as some people I know, and a lot more interesting than a number of them. Soon the ninth adventure, Honky Tonk Samurai, will appear from Mulholland Press, and in line right behind it is another of their adventures, RUSTY PUPPY. There is even a Television show about them forthcoming from Sundance Channel titled Hap and Leonard, as well as a collection of novellas and stories of that same title forthcoming from Tachyon Press. If that isn’t exciting enough, there will soon be graphic novel adventures from SST publications.

Thank goodness for those guys. They have been good to me. 

I never know when Hap and Leonard will show up with new adventures, but when they do, I’m always here to listen and record them for the reader. 


The latest Hap and Leonard story, Honky Tonk Samurai, is out now. 

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Phew, what a shopping spree it’s been! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning more about the softer side of some of your favourite Mulholland detectives. We thought we’d round off the week with these cracking gifts!

Danielle Ramsay would buy Jack Brady…

I have a couple of presents that I would give DI Jack Brady this Christmas – he’s had a tough old year and I reckon he needs a bit of cheering up. The first one would be an original vinyl (Brady is an avid vinyl collector of blues and jazz) of Crazy Blues by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds; written by the songwriter, Perry Bradford and released on August 10th 1920. Crazy Blues was Mamie Smith’s second single but it was the first authentic performance of African-American blues music made for a predominately African-American audience. Blues vocalists, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey may have gone on to dominate the 1920s but it was Mamie Smith with this ground-breaking single who pioneered the way for blues music.

The second present would be something Brady could savour while listening to Mamie Smith and that would be a bottle of Gordon and Macphail’s Old Elgin whisky – Brady loves both whisky and Scotland; Elgin in particular, so it is a perfect combination. The final present is simply fun – an  extended rally track day at Brands Hatch with two free race tickets and 40 minutes driving time. This is something I have personally experienced and loved and I am certain that Brady would get as much adrenaline pumping fun as I had, if not more!

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All week we’ve been asking Mulholland authors what they would buy their main characters for Christmas. Today we have our first animal to feature, and you can probably guess who it is...

Vaseem Khan would buy Inspector Chopra (and baby Ganesha!)…

Inspector Chopra isn't big on festivals but is very concerned by the social inequalities in his country so he would very much like to see Santa deliver him a large parcel of justice together with a gift-wrapped box of fairness. As a fan of Sherlock Holmes, he also likes to chew on a calabash pipe while he's thinking, so a new one might be in order as the stress of his recent investigative endeavours has pretty much worn the old one to bits. His sidekick, baby elephant Ganesha, has a simple wish list ... a year's supply of Cadbury's Dairy Milk please!

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Continuing our Christmas gifting theme is David Mark, and you might remember that Roisin is introduced through her planned Christmas gifts in Dark Winter, the first book in the DS McAvoy series...

David Mark would buy Aector McAvoy…

Aector would be astounded that anybody planned to get him anything! He certainly wouldn't presume and he would probably be very content with the Christmas lunch and one of those Dairy Milk bars the size of a paving slab. But Roisin would get him something personal, and he does love his gadgets. There's a remote control helicopter that we both have our eyes on. In truth, he would want peace and goodwill to all men, though he would settle for a book on something obscure and a subscription to some improving magazine.

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Think fictional character should get Christmas presents? Us too! 

Rebecca Muddiman would buy DI Gardner…

As Gardner will be alone this Christmas, to stop him wallowing I think I'd get him a few comedy box sets. I think he'd appreciate some Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and maybe a bit of Alan Partridge.