All Blog Posts Tagged 'little' (11)

"For the Love of Crime Fiction" by Aaron Philip Clark

I was invited to Paul D. Brazill's blog where I chat about my love of crime fiction and other things. Read here.

Added by Aaron Philip Clark on August 25, 2012 at 4:16am — No Comments

Is crime fiction set for a rise in sales? Publishers think so, crime authors hope so!

I read an article at the weekend that said "Crime often spikes when the economy splutters, but does demand for crime fiction surge as well? Publishers hope so." So do crime authors.

The article went on to detail how several publishing houses are launching mystery imprints in hopes of gaining a toehold in the thriving crime-fiction market.

Crime has… Continue

Added by Pauline Rowson on July 11, 2011 at 6:36pm — No Comments

Long gestation and the crime novel

Crime novelists generally write a novel a year. It’s what publishers want. Some big writers—and I mean, 25 million books sold—have told me their publishers and agents complain that if they don’t produce a book a year their readers will forget them.

In the case of such writers, some of those 25 million may…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 19, 2011 at 5:56pm — 2 Comments

A who's who of Israeli corruption

JERUSALEM — The heads of all the crime families in New York used to get together every Wednesday night at the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. If you were looking for an Israeli parallel, you could do worse than the gym I work out at.

The Cybex Club at the David’s Citadel Hotel has a nice view of the Ottoman walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. It’s also where the legal, political and business elite come to sweat (actually, being Israelis, they…

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Added by Matt Rees on April 11, 2010 at 11:20pm — No Comments

Literary reviews: If you can’t say something nice…

Kingsley Amis said that “a bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch.” That’s because Kingsley, bless his vindictive old heart, was probably too busy spoiling someone else’s. Believe me, a bad review leaves a bad taste all day long.

That’s not because of any insecurity about my writing. If a review is negative or even mildly snarky, I know the reviewer got it wrong. It’s the mere existence of negative thoughts about me…

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Added by Matt Rees on March 8, 2010 at 1:15am — 2 Comments

Gumshoe Review: THE FOURTH ASSASSIN 'excellent'...and a list of crime fiction good, bad and pointless

Top crime fiction blog Gumshoe Review rates my new Palestinian crime novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN very highly: "Rees does an excellent job of showing the pressures on the young Palestinians and describing the microcosm of one immigrant community within the U.S. The mystery also contains plenty of twist and turns." Read Mel Jacobs's full review.

If you feel compelled to read any other…

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Added by Matt Rees on March 2, 2010 at 8:23pm — 1 Comment

How does that grab you? Great openings to new books

The first line of a top-notch novel usually has a lot of punch -- to "grab" you. My long-time favorite is "The Sun Also Rises," which manages to tell you a great deal about one of the main characters, but even more about the narrator: "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn." This weekend The San Francisco Chronicle has… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on February 28, 2010 at 7:31pm — 4 Comments

New York Times Book Review: THE FOURTH ASSASSIN 'engrossing,' 'New Yorkers will be startled'

New Yorkers tend to have a "seen it all" outlook on life. Unsurprisingly, given the madhouse that is the Big Apple. But I've now officially done something that'll shock them. In The New York Times Book Review's crime fiction roundup by Marilyn Stasio, my new novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN is called "engrossing." It's also described as a novel that…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 27, 2010 at 5:01pm — 3 Comments

The Daily Beast and The New York Times

My new Palestinian crime novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN is one of five "This Week's Hot Reads" on The Daily Beast, which also happens to be the hot read of the web these days. The Beast writes of the book and its Brooklyn setting: "Rees paints a meticulous portrait of the post-9/11 community of Little Palestine and the tension of cultures trying to…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 14, 2010 at 5:32pm — 2 Comments

Why's a Palestinian sleuth in Brooklyn?

I’ve been called the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine, the John Le Carre of the Middle East, the James Ellroy of…Palestine, the Graham Greene of Jerusalem, and the Georges Simenon of the Palestinian refugee camps. Depends which review you happen to have read.

I’ve written three previous crime novels about Omar Yussef, my Palestinian schoolteacher/sleuth. Omar has been called the Philip Marlowe of the Arab street, the Hercules Poirot of the Near East, Sam Spade fed…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 12, 2010 at 5:50pm — No Comments

'The Fourth Assassin' takes Page 69 Test

The blog empire of the Campaign for the American Reader has as its flagship the Page 69 Test. The premise is this: open any book to page 69; if it grabs you, that's a better indication of whether you'll enjoy the book than simply reading the opening page. Try it on a book you like (and one you don't), it usually is quite reliable. Blogger Marshal Zeringue asked me to submit my new Palestinian crime novel,…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 9, 2010 at 5:47am — No Comments