So Happy Monday everyone and welcome to Favourite Authors week. This week will feature 5 of my favourite authors, who will tell us some of their favourite things and I will follow that with a review of my favourite book of theirs. I asked each one the same questions: Favourite Book Written. Favourite Book Read. Favourite Meal. Favourite Holiday/destination and Favourite film/tv show. I would like to thank each and every one of them for taking part and today its all about Sophie Hannah.
I adore Sophie’s books – her creation Simon Waterhouse is one of my favourite detectives. Quirky, flawed yet strangely loveable he investigates the complicated cases and never fails to find the answer. The mysteries are always fun, complex and brain bending and definitely test my mettle when it comes to working out what the heck is going on…The very best thing a book can do for me. Here is what Sophie had to tell me about her favourite things..
Favourite Book Written
The Carrier, because although is is a (hopefully) twisty and impossible-to-guess murder mystery like all my others, it is also (again, hopefully, if I’ve done my job right) a study of virtue, vice, guilt and morality, and at its centre is a story of agonising, forbidden love. It’s about a passionate sort-of-affair, and the love part is really just as important as the crime aspects of the novel. I’m a mystery addict – mystery is what gets me through a book, both as a writer and as a reader – and there’s nothing more mysterious than an inaccessible love object like Tim Breary in The Carrier. On this basis, I like to think that if I applied to the Romantic Novelists Association, they might allow me to join!
Favourite Book Read
So impossible to choose! Broken Harbour by Tana French – she is the writer whose new book I always look forward to most avidly. She’s superb at conjuring up an atmosphere, drawing you into a story that is so rich and detailed and suspenseful that you simply can’t put it down. And when you finish it, you actually feel mildly bereaved! How will you ever read another novel now? What can possibly live up to the brilliance of Tana French? She’s huge in the US, and not so huge here, but she really deserves to be. Broken Harbour is her best novel, though they’re all utterly fantastic.
Favourite Meal.
Curry in an Indian Restaurant – with so much chilli in it that my head might explode.
Favourite Holiday/Destination.
Hotel Sources Des Alpes in Leucherbad, Switzerland. In fact, I love it so much that I sent Gaby and Tim there in The Carrier. Unfortunately, all they managed to do while they were there was have a fraught revelatory exchange involving several key plot points, but when I go I have a much more fun time – there’s a naturally heated (i.e. from the ground) outdoor swimming pool there that is just heaven!
Favourite Tv Show/Film.
Film:
Twelve Angry Men – Sidney Lumet’s jury room drama, starring Henry Fonda and Lee J Cobb. I quote it all the time!
‘When there are eleven votes for guilty, it’s not easy to raise your hand and send a boy off to the electric chair to die.’ That’s my favourite quote from the movie, and it’s made such a big impression on me that I will probably never be allowed on a jury – I would just think of Henry Fonda and say, ‘Not guilty’ over and over again.
TV: House MD. Brilliant medical drama, fantastic human drama, a compulsive mystery-of-the-week in every episode, and a superb investigation of what it means to be a good person. Greg House is a drug-addicted, hooker-addicted, law-breaking, horrendously sexist and unprofessional, insulting, verbally abusive genius doctor who ignores absolutely every rule that good doctors and citizens are supposed to follow. Many of his colleagues hate him, try to get him fired and call him a jerk. And yet, underneath all his bad behaviour, he is not only a wonderful (though damaged) person, but also the best, and the most honest (because least hypocritical) character in the drama from a moral point of view. It’s incredibly cleverly done, the script is brilliant, and the show actually has a consistent philosophical position. There are two central tenets to this philosophy: people are idiots and everybody lies. It is impossible to overstate how seriously I take House. In almost any tricky situation, I think, ‘What would Greg House do?’
Thanks Sophie!
Now, my choice for favourite book might well have been The Carrier which I enjoyed very much – its a dilemma between that one and one other so as Sophie has talked a little about The Carrier in her answers I’m going to go for the alternative.
Kind of Cruel is one of my favourites not only because the mystery at the heart of it is so compelling but also because Amber was such a great character! My review:
“Kind Cruel, Kind of Cruel”….words said by our protaganist, Amber Hewerdine, under hypnosis. She knows she’s seen those words somewhere before…but she can’t quite remember where. Then she is arrested on suspicion of the murder of a woman she has never heard of…So begins Sophie Hannah’s latest twisted tale. Facing her insomnia, trying to work out what she has buried in her subconcious, we follow Amber as her life twist and turns – is it something to do with the death of her friend, who’s children she now has custody of? Or is she suffering a false memory and could it be something else entirely. As usual for Ms Hannah, its unlikely that you will know until it is revealed. And again as usual you will find yourself actively engaging with the characters in either a love or hate relationship. Simon Waterhouse is on top form once more with his weird and wonderful ways and Charlie is right there along with him, rolling her eyes and getting into all sorts of scrapes all by herself. The beauty of these books is the ongoing relationship between these two…and a stranger relationship you are unlikely to encounter. Brilliant.
Other titles
You may have noticed that Sophie has her own page on Liz Loves Books so you can read reviews of her other novels there as well.
Thank you SO much to Sophie Hannah for taking part today. Tomorrow it is the turn of Elizabeth Haynes.
Happy Reading Folks!
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