UK vs US Thrillers at West Barnes Library with Sam Frances and Rod Reynolds
June is National Crime Reading Month and we had a great time at West Barnes Library with Sam Frances and Rod Reynolds, talking about their female-led police detective books. Thanks to them for coming in and to the Friends of West Barnes Library who help me to organise the events.
All Eyes On You is the debut novel from Sam Frances, featuring DS Alice Washington. Sam describes the book as Bridget Jones meets Luther! Alice is a feisty and determined officer but still has the ability to majorly stuff up. Although it’s set in a fictional village in the UK, it’s not a cosy crime novel.
Detective Casey Wray is back for a second outing in Shatter Creek. The no-nonsense American cop is still dealing with police corruption on Long Island, as well as a shooting that disturbs the community.
We talked about writing with different viewpoints and whether the authors are plotters, pantsers or plantsers! Rod tries to challenge himself with each book and maybe write it in a different way to his previous novels. While he’s written in first person before, he chose to go third person with Casey and stuck to her viewpoint throughout. Sam has a mix of viewpoints with her characters. Alice, as the main character, is in first person but Roy and the perpetrator are in third. Both Sam and Rod liked the term ‘plantser’ as a compromise between the two extremes of plotting and pantsing. Rod said that he would sometimes deliberately write himself into a corner to see how Casey could get out of it.
There were lots of other things we talked about and there were great questions from the audience. But we finished the evening with the obligatory theme tune quiz that has to be done when Rod comes to the library. I was kinder to him this time as it was for the audience and not just the authors!
If you want to find out more about the books and the authors, then click on their names!
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