The World's Finest Mystery... by Ed Gorman Read Free Book Online Page B

material (violence, obscenity, and video-style jump cuts) can mesh into an outrageously appealing whole: Snatch is a hoot and an able demonstration that East End gangsters don't have to be boorish and leaden. To confirm this view, Jonathan Glazer, a new director, also from the world of advertising and pop videos, had a great end-of-year debut with Sexy Beast , which gave British bad-boy perennial Ray Winstone a worthy role as a Brit gangster retired to the Spanish coast whose tranquility is shattered by the arrival of a past nemesis, hilariously if worryingly played by a less-than-saintly Ben Kingsley, far from his Gandhi image. So all is not lost on the cinematic front, with some further nuggets already in the can and awaiting release, which I've had the opportunity to view at festivals or private screenings.
     
     
Film and TV also played a major part in one of the year's major events, the Crime Scene Festival held at London's National Film Theatre on the South Bank in July, and now scheduled to be an annual event. Run by Adrian Wootton and Maxim Jakubowski, who used to organize Nottingham's Shots on the Page and the Nottingham Bouchercon, the event combines both literary events and screenings. This year's events attracted thousands of delegates, to meet American authors like Dennis Lehane, Elizabeth George, Robert Crais, Jeffery Deaver, and George Pelecanos and the crème de la crème of British crime writing, alongside many major film previews and retrospectives (and a Margery Allingham radio play performed on stage by Simon Brett and other thespians). The July 2001 Crime Scene will feature a major Agatha Christie section. Nottingham's natural successor, Manchester's Dead on Deansgate, was also a success and took place in October with a familiar blend of panels and events, making British crime fans spoiled for choice in the availability of events featuring their favorite authors.
     
     
Likewise, the British crime-magazine scene still thrives with all publications still going: CADS, Crime Scene, Shots , and Crime Wave , with varying degrees of regularity. Slipstream magazine The Third Alternative also published some crime stories. Similarly, London's two mystery bookshops still cater for all the crime in print, with Murder One now reaching the venerable age of twelve years on the fabled Charing Cross Road, and still the largest specialty bookshop in the world. Covent Garden's smaller Crime in Store, however, only survived through charitable donations openly sought from CWA members, which kept them afloat when closure loomed in the spring.
     
     
A perennial bee in bonnet of the crime community is the lack of serious review consideration afforded by major newspapers and publications. This is now very much on the mend, with prestigious critics from the field holding secure positions at leading and influential titles: Donna Leon at the Sunday Times , Marcel Berlins at The Times , Mark Timlin at The Independent on Sunday, Peter Guttridge at The Observer , Frances Fyfield and Tim Binyon at the Evening Standard , Val McDermid at The Manchester Evening News and Maxim Jakubowski at The Guardian . Mike Ripley lost his Sunday Telegraph platform but moved to the regional Birmingham Post following the death of Bill Pardoe.
     
     
Like any year, this was also one of regret, with the passing of authors and close friends Patricia Moyes and Sarah Caudwell just months apart. Other casualties of the year include Miles Tripp, Laurence James, Duncan Kyle, Elizabeth Lemarchand, and Roger Longrigg (Domini Taylor, Frank Parrish).
     
     
And so to a year in books: 2000 began with a bang with a controversial debut that went straight onto the best-seller lists, Mo Hayder's Birdman , a serial-killer novel that was disliked by many but whose dark power reached out far beyond the specialized crime readership (as had John Connolly's Every Dead Thing the year before). Mo Hayder was a godsend to publicists with her blond film-star looks, murky past,