and Satire
In Short
H. R. F Keating Switch-overs in Short Stories
Fiction and Fact
Peter Lovesey Fictionalizing Characters and Crimes from Real Life
Anthony Berkeley Trial and Error
Partners in Crime
Dorothy L. Sayers Collaborative Writing
Adapting
Alison Joseph Writing for Radio
Challenges
Martyn Waites Impostor Syndrome
Suzette A. Hill Writing: a Painful Pleasure
David Stuart Davies Writer’s Block
Ending
Laura Wilson The End of the Beginning
Publishing
David Roberts The Changing Face of Publishing
Antonia Hodgson What Editors Want
Russell James Traditional versus Self-Publishing
Jill Paton Walsh One Thing Leads to Another
Writing Lives
Reginald Hill The Writing Process
Jonathan Gash Reading for Pleasure
Janet Neel Don’t Give Up the Day Job
Bertie Denham Writing to Relax
Elly Griffiths Social Media and the Death of Nancy
John Le Carré The Joy of Writing
Len Deighton Different Books; Different Problems; Different Solutions
The Contributors: Biographical Notes
The Detection Club: Presidents
The Detection Club: Members
Index of Authors
Subject Index
Copyright and Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
In Howdunit, no fewer than ninety leading crime novelists offer personal perspectives on their approach to their craft – and on the writing life. There are countless valuable insights for would-be writers, but our overriding aim is to entertain and inform anyone who enjoys crime fiction. And perhaps even some people who don’t regard themselves as crime fans – at least not yet – but who are fascinated by the way authors work.
Each contributor is a past or present member of the Detection Club, the world’s oldest social network of crime writers. Publication of Howdunit coincides with the Club’s ninetieth birthday, so there is one essay for each year of the Club’s life to date. Over the past nine decades, many of Britain’s preeminent authors in the genre have belonged to the Club. Their work includes spy, thriller, and adventure fiction, as well as traditional detective stories and novels of psychological suspense. It is high time that their collective wisdom appeared in a single volume. The emphasis is on present-day writing and writers, but our predecessors’ thoughts remain of interest. This is partly because they illustrate how much the writing life and literary fashions have changed, and partly because they show that quite a few challenges remain the same. Detection Club members take their work seriously – but we also take joy from it. That sense of pleasure ripples through the contributions, from Lindsey Davis’s thoughts on literary style to Simon Brett’s rueful reflections about the prospect of having one’s masterpiece adapted by other hands.
A century ago, the Club’s first President, G. K. Chesterton, wrote with pungent wit, ‘It is a well-known fact that people who have never succeeded in anything end by writing books about how to succeed; and I do not see why this principle should not be applied to success in the writing of detective stories as well as in lower and less glorious walks of life.’ But I like to think that Chesterton would have approved of this book, and would be delighted to see his own opinions appear alongside those of his contemporaries and successors.
From
