Cover to Cover Radio Ulster
Last week, Belfast hosted a weekend dedicated to crime thriller writers - Noireland.
It was Halloween too, so crime, mystery and a good old-fashioned ghost story proved an appropriate theme for the book programme, Cover to Cover. Presenter Steven Rainey is warm and relaxed, drawing the most out of his guests.
Among them was local writer done internationally good, Adrian McKinty, who resurrected 1980s Belfast complete with hunger strikes, riots and power cuts. His stories centre around Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic RUC man.
There was a small stumbling block to his first Duffy book, he confessed.
As he developed his character, he recognised that Duffy would hate 80s music and it would be an “unfair punishment” to have the book named after a Smiths song.
But the detective would definitely appreciate Tom Waits and so The Cold Cold Ground was born.
The only problem was that he had to get permission to use the song from Mr Waits.
“The first thing I got back was a blanket denial, I was absolutely devastated,” he said.
It was, you might say, a chilling moment. The Cold Cold Ground was based around that Tom Waits song. This could have murdered the whole story. He had to try again.
“I wrote them a crawly, creepy letter saying my project is worthy, please,” said Adrian... case solved and, later, it won a Spinetingler award.
Also on Cover to Cover, was writer Susan Hill who wrote the ghost story The Woman in Black which was later made into a film and starred Daniel Radcliffe.
It is an acclaimed ghost story and high on my list to “must reads”.
The crime writer Ruth Rendell features among Susan Hill’s fans.
“She said she didn’t want to put the light out after she finished reading The Woman In Black for the first time,” said Hill. Praise, indeed from a leading light in the genre.
