Nicci French Blog

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The wait is over! If you’re after Nicci French interviews, nerve-jangling video footage, secret spots in London turned crime scene at the hands of Nicci and Sean, or a bit of Nicci French going all international on us, then look no further than the hot-off-the-press, brand-spanking-new Nicci French YouTube Channel – and remember to subscribe, as there’s more not-to-be-missed footage coming your way. Oh and we'd love to know what you think. Why not stop by our Facebook page and let us know your thoughts!

Sample chapters from Blue Monday and Tuesday’s Gone

The paperback edition of Tuesday’s Gone has finally hit the shelves. If you’re new to the Frieda Klein sequence, we’ve posted sample chapters from Blue Monday and Tuesday’s Gone for you on the Nicci French Facebook page. And we love hearing from you, so please let us know what you think.

Tuesday's Gone is released in paperback

Run, don’t walk! Tuesday’s Gone, the gripping second instalment in the Frieda Klein sequence is now available in paperback. There’s only one way to find out if Frieda has recovered from the events of Blue Monday, and that’s by getting yourselves over to your bookstore to get your hands on your very own copy. There’s nothing quite like a hot chocolate, crackling fire and a spot of crime to see you through the winter months! 

Treat yourself to the only Blue Monday that counts!

Okay, one week to Blue Monday, officially the most depressing day of the year. But why not turn that frown upside down and treat yourself to the only Blue Monday that counts? The eBook edition of Blue Monday, the first instalment in the Frieda Klein sequence, is now available for only £0.49 on iTunes and Amazon. See, things are starting to look better already! Act fast though, the offer only lasts until January 18th.

Our New National Sport

In an angry reflection on the Connecticut shootings in the New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson wonders: 'What does it take for a society to be sickened by its own behavior and to change its attitudes?' He gives four examples, two in the past, that have been faced up to, and two in the present, that haven't. There are the South African Boers and the apartheid system, the American Deep South and institutionalized racism.

In the unresolved category are the Japanese and their whaling industry and then, what is the final example? Russia's corruption? African kleptocracy? No, God help us, it's this:

'When will the British realize that public drunkenness—a practice now internationally associated with them as a nation—is something to be embarrassed about?'

Britain, the nation of Magna Carta, of Shakespeare and Newton, the industrial revolution, Hume, Locke and the Beatles, this royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, is now mainly known for scantily clad young women vomiting in city centres on Friday nights. Is that really how they see us? It's rather embarrassing.

 

 

 

 

The Horror, the Horror

Stephen Fry complained on Twitter yesterday about someone from Fortnum & Mason being rude to Fry's assistant about a failed delivery. Don't you hate it when that happens?

But one of the benefits of living in Britain, rather than in Mali or Syria, is the triviality of most of the things that torment us. For most of us, it's not the tragedies of life, it's the things that get on your nerves.

For example, I watch a lot of DVDs and before you get to watch the movie or the TV programme, I go through a sequence of irritation. 

First, there is notice telling the viewer that any opinions expressed in the commentaries and accompanying material do not represent the views of the company. Well, thanks for clearing that up. And I'm no lawyer, but I can inform confidently them that if some actor or director makes a libellous or inflammatory comment, that notice is not going to be any use in court. And in the meantime there's another thirty seconds in my life I won't get back. 

Speaking personally, I'm not tormented by Waiting for Godot, I'm tormented by waiting for lifts or for traffic lights to change, which is why I repeatedly jab at those buttons, which I don't believe are really connected to anything. When you try to fast forward through that notice the thousandth time you've seen it, another little sign comes up saying something like 'action invalid'. 

Maybe all those statements on the commentaries really do represent the views of the corporation. Otherwise, why would they deny it so obsessively.

Secondly, when you've finally moved on from that notice, there's the even more irritating anti-piracy ad. You know, the one that says, making a supposedly good point, that you wouldn't steal a car. Well, if I could download a car, maybe I would steal it. But that's not my point. My real point is: don't lecture me about not pirating DVDs. Self-evidently, this is not a pirated DVD because you put your anti-privacy ad on it. Until you can find a way to put anti-privacy ads on pirated DVDs, just stop doing them altogether. 

The little message 'thanking' you for buying an official DVD is just as bad. You're welcome; now demonstrate your gratitude by showing us the bloody film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did You Hear the One about the Actress...

...who was so stupid that she slept with the screenwriter? We didn't tell that one at the talk we gave at the London Screenwriting Research Seminar. But we did mention Woody Allen's line about the movie industry: 'It's worse than dog eat dog - it's dog doesn't return dog's phonecalls.'

We were talking about our experience being adapted for TV and film. At first I thought of us as like birds appearing at a gathering of ornithologists, but on reflection that exaggerates our importance. We were more like a worm and a beetle appearing at a gathering of ornithologists explaining what it's like being birdfood.

An interesting evening, though (at least for us). One question was raised, without really being answered: is it possible for there to be a bad film with a good script? It feels like it should be, but it's difficult to think of an example.

Forever Yours, Mozart

I just finished Robert Spaethling's terrific translation of Mozart's letters. He really was one of the great letter writers, up there with Keats and Byron. Here are a few things I learned:

1) He was clever. He casually apologizes to his father for sending him a piece with the prelude and fugue in the wrong order: 'The reason for the mixup is this: I had already composed the fugue and was writing it down while I worked out the prelude in my head.' That sounds hard.

2) He was confident: for a performance in front of the Emperor, he wrote a violin sonata so quickly that he had to improvise the piano part himself.

3) He was fast: on a visit to Linz he was suddenly asked to give a concert of one of his symphonies. But he hadn't brought his music with him, so he wrote one of his greatest symphonies, no. 36 (the 'Linz'), in three days.

4) He didn't much care for nature. In March 1778, he and his mother took the coach from Mannheim to Paris. It took nine and a half days: 'I've never been so bored in all my life.' According to Googlemaps, you could now drive it in less than five hours. And you could listen to Mozart on the way.

5) In some of his letters he uses scatological language that would make Norman Mailer blush. But, oddly, he never uses it to male correspondents, or to his wife. It was just to his female cousin - and to his mother. 

6) And putting my crime writer's hat on for a moment: he wasn't killed by Salieri.

Crying Woolf

Wonderful essay on Virginia Woolf by Benjamin Schwarz. He has a gift that isn't often noticed. He quotes well. Woolf could be an atrocious snob. But still, she was a snob who could say this, in a lecture to the Workers' Education Association in 1940:

'Let us bear in mind a piece of advice that an eminent Victorian who was also an eminent pedestrian once gave to walkers: “Whenever you see a board up with ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted,’ trespass at once.” Let us trespass at once. Literature is no one’s private ground; literature is common ground … It is thus that English literature will survive this war … if commoners and outsiders like ourselves make that country our own country, if we teach ourselves how to read and how to write, how to preserve and how to create.'

I wish I'd written that.

Alice's Adventures

Nice Radio Four documentary about Alice's Restaurant by one of my favourite people, Ian McMillan. Apart from a sweet meeting with Alice herself and a colleague of the police officer who arrested Arlo Guthrie for littering, the programme showed how this 18-minute anti-Vietnam War, talking blues song is now a children's favourite.

This came as no surprise to us. We used to play it to the children on long car journeys. I remember once a four-year-old piping up from the back seat: 'What's a father-raper?' We always tried to answer the childrens' questions honestly, but I think it was the hardest question I've ever been asked. First I had to explain what sex was, and then things got really sticky.