Bad Neighbour News

I've been a bit rubbish at talking about The Bad Neighbour here since it came out, mostly due to unfortunate timing: it was released as I was hammering to get the final draft of the third Black River Chronicles book done, and then I was on holiday, and honestly, it's all been a bit horrifically busy and chaotic for the last couple of months.  Yes, even the holiday.  There were wasps.  I'm not kidding.

With all of that, I haven't kept track of every review, though thankfully I've seen enough to know that they've been mostly positive so far.  However, a couple of real standouts stuck with me enough that I managed to make a note of them.  My favourite, the one I've been quoting all over the place, comes from Linda Wilson at Crime Review, who says that "The Bad Neighbour was all too real and all too depressing and certainly deserves the appellation northern noir.  It is also a well-written and cleverly imagined crime thriller with a knife-sharp edge."  Meanwhile, in the only local paper to have thus far picked up on the Yorkshire connections, Sally Clifford at Bradford's Telegraph and Argus says, among other nice things: "Exciting, gritty, and dramatic, this book has it all."

Obviously, that doesn't tell you a great deal about what The Bad Neighbour's actually about - though the Telegraph and Argus review does go into quite a bit of plot detail if that appeals.  However, I've been all over the place talking about the whys and wherefores of the story, so if you want to get a feel for it without risking plot spoilers then there's plenty out there.  A couple of pieces that I've mentioned already, because they were in my blog tour, are the interview I did with Lucy Hay and an article I put together for Random Things Through My Letterbox where I discuss eight books that have had a huge influence on me and my writing.  But since then I've also taken part in a Q&A with Anne Bonny over on her website and, perhaps the ideal starting place if you're wondering if the book's for you, written a piece introducing my protagonist (though, as I insist on pointing out, definitely not hero!) Ollie Clay.

Last but self-evidently not least, I've done my first proper interview in a while, with Paul Stretton-Stephens of the Crime Fiction Lounge podcast.  This one was a real pleasure, partly because Paul's a thoroughly nice bloke and partly because it was a joy to actually, really talk a bit about The Bad Neighbour rather than just writing about it in one form or another.  And also to get diverted onto totally unrelated topics that I'm nearly as enthusiastic about, like the impossible task of trying to pin down my favourite movie and my struggles to learn Japanese.

And that's it for the moment, I think, though there's more on the way.  And if any of that made you want to grab a copy of The Bad Neighbour - you do, right? - then it's in all of the usual book-selling places, in a dizzying choice of paperback, hardback, e-book, and audio formats.  Personally I'd go for the hardback, because it's lovely.  I mean, as lovely as a grim and gritty Northern crime thriller with a "knife-sharp edge" can be, anyway!