Lesley Grant-Adamson
Personal Information
Description
Lesley Grant-Adamson is an acclaimed novelist, short-story writer and teacher of creative writing. She was a journalist who gave up her job (as a feature writer on the Guardian in London) to write fiction. Her first two novels Patterns in the Dust and The Face of Death (Faber, 1985) brought her international success with the classic English detective story and the psychological suspense novel. Patterns in the Dust was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey award for first crime novels. Like several of her early novels, it featured newspaper folk and their ailing industry. She wrote a further 14 crime novels of various types, while reviewers credited her with ‘turning the genre into an art form’. Her short stories have been read on BBC Radio 4, Radio 3 and Classic FM. They have appeared in magazines, literary journals and anthologies. Lesley has taught novel-writing at the Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd. Her success as a teacher, and her wide experience of writing crime fiction, led to a commission for Writing Crime and Suspense Fiction (Hodder, 1996) and the updated Writing Crime Fiction (Hodder, 2003). After her RLF fellowships she taught a City University evening class in writing crime fiction. She tutors writers individually, from her home in Suffolk where she lives with her husband Andrew. They once wrote a book together. A Season in Spain (Pavilion, 1994) is a portrait of the Alpujarra region of Andalusia where they lived for two years. (Source)
Books
Teach Yourself Writing Crime Fiction
We are all born with a talent for story-telling. Few people, though, have an instinctive understanding of how to develop their ideas into novels. In TEACH YOURSELF WRITING CRIME FICTION, Lesley Grant-Adamson encourages you to explore the ideas you already have, and gets you working step by step on your own work. This book analyses the elements of the broad crime fiction genre, covering the classic detective story, the espionage thriller, comic crime fiction, romantic suspense, the feminist sleuth and more. Grant-Adamson guides you through the process of crafting your material: - recognising an idea for a novel - setting the scene - shaping your characters - evolving plot - researching your background - maintaining style and using literary techniques - finding a way out if you get stuck! This practical book also includes advice on presenting your work to a publisher and enjoying your new role as a published crime writer. Whether you are a novice or already established, TEACH YOURSELF WRITING CRIME FICTION shows you how to find your voice as a crime writer, without cramping your style.
Flynn
Ever since F.X. Flynn made his first appearance in Confess, Fletch, matching wits with the inimitable Irwin Fletcher, he has befuddled, infuriated, and amazed his colleagues on the Boston Police force while in pursuit of blackmailers, murderers, embezzlers, politicians, and, occasionally, his fellow policemen.It might have been an accident that brought down the Boeing 707 over Boston Harbor, virtually in Flynn's own backyard. But it seems unlikely, with so many potential targets on board: The heavily insured, elderly Federal judge; the has-been British actor; the middleweight champ; the Middle Eastern finance minister. The motive could have been greed, murder, revenge, or even terrorism--and it's up to the good inspector to get to the bottom of it.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Dangerous Games
London, 1851. An alluring, outspoken widow and an enigmatic agent are drawn into a web of power, greed, and ambition that threatens to overturn the very future of the British Empire…Society knows Lilly Clarence Hampton as a respected widow who was wildly in love with her husband, the architect of London’s famed Crystal Palace. The truth…well, the truth would cost Lilly her reputation, her freedom, and quite possibly her life. And one man has uncovered it—the reclusive, savagely handsome Julian St. Martin. A former agent of the Crown, Julian intends to blackmail Lilly to obtain plans to the Palace, where the Koh-I-Noor—the largest diamond in the world—will be presented to Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition. Men have committed all manner of crimes to possess the fabled gem, but Julian’s intentions are even darker. And the closer he gets to the beguiling Lilly, the more complicated matters become.Succumbing to intense, primal desire, Julian and Lilly both become pawns in a wicked game where no one can be trusted, and where the final, shocking truth will test their newfound passion to the limit…
A season in Spain
This is the rocky world where to Moors settle when they were chased out of Granada five hundred years ago. They are very much in evidence, especially in the clusers of flat rofed houses that might be taken for villages in North Africa: and in the irrigation system that waters the terraces. Out oive grow was on the fertile river plane of the Guadalfeo, twenty miles from Granada as the eagle flies and twelve miles from the Mediterranian.
Wild Justice
Wish you were here
Freya Daly has always been a smart businesswoman - tough, unemotional, and a killer at negotiations. But for the last few months, she's been bursting into tears for no reason at all. Even though she's sure it must be some kind of rare eye condition, her boss (and father) removes her from her usual task of buying high-rent commercial properties in Boston, and banishes her to a rundown campground in Idaho with orders to obtain the property at any cost. Why the property is so valuable, Freya doesn't know. All alone and far from home, her rare eye condition only gets worse. The one thing that seems to help is the friendship she strikes up with Piper Brody, a little girl who shows Freya that being a kid again can be a lot of fun. Nate Brody is a five-star chef in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, at the moment, he's not in Cincinnati - he's running his father's rundown campground in Idaho. Having made a deathbed promise to his father to find a mysterious lost item before selling the place, Nate is anxious to get back home, where his restaurant and career wait for him....though, maybe not for much longer if he doesn't get back soon. It doesn't help that his eleven-year-old daughter, Piper, loves it in Idaho. For once, he's not working fifteen-hour days, and he and Piper feel like a family. The only nuisance in their Idaho life is the guest in cabin number four. The beautiful woman from Boston has charmed Piper and, for some reason, seems as eager to buy the campground as Nate is to unload it. As Freya and Nate build a friendship, things start to heat up - in more ways than one.