Comments on Halfhead: Bloody Women

Oh, the Judas Chair was horrible. That entire book...

2008-06-29T16:10:00.000+01:00

Oh, the Judas Chair was horrible. That entire book was friggin' terrifying. I love Val McDermid!

That should be an interesting debate. I for one t...

2008-06-29T05:32:00.000+01:00

That should be an interesting debate. I for one think female writers are a lot more graphic. As Steve said Mo Hayder is a very good example. Chelsea Cains debut was very graphic as well and her website is very "bloody" too. The trouble with your books "Mr sex god" is that the people who have met you know you are just the nicest guy and of course all that murder and mayhem is just something that "she who musts" collected in a net one night while you were asleep.......well thats what you told me..takes the edge off a bit :-)

Linda

I don't include a great deal of violence in my own...

2008-06-27T19:24:00.000+01:00

I don't include a great deal of violence in my own books (yes, people get killed, but not in a particularly nasty way...ahem).

As Mr Mosby well knows, I winced with the hot screwdriver in the eye scene in 50/50 Killer, simply because the scene was so realistically rendered. Simple but gruesome acts of violence can be more shocking because they're more believable.

The only time I think I've ever been disgusted by violence was in a description of sexual violence in "A Game We Play" by Simona Vinci, which I considered incredibly exploitative. It's the one and only time that I've thrown a book away after reading it.

That's a fair point, and there are obviously shade...

2008-06-27T15:22:00.000+01:00

That's a fair point, and there are obviously shades to the issue in terms of the explicitness of the violence, the way it's presented, the effect it has, and so on.

I didn't mean to be rude by the way - I'm actually looking forward to your panel a lot. When I said the debate was a non-starter, I meant the generic 'women write more violent fiction' arguments that occasionally rear their heads in the crime community. It's like sampling a lake, finding lots of big female fish, and concluding "female fish are the biggest" - but forgetting there's a sea full of sharks down the road. Or something like that, anyway. Maybe.

Birdman - hope you like it. :-)

I agree Steve, I didn't find the Judas Chair scene...

2008-06-27T14:59:00.000+01:00

I agree Steve, I didn't find the Judas Chair scene shocking, but it was explicit and very violent. As long as it serves with the story (and in the case of Val's spiky chair, it definitely does) I'm not perturbed by it. But I'll give Birdman a go on your recommendation - though I should point out that I'm not going into it hoping to be shocked.

I wonder how many women are writing hardcore horror?

Maybe I'm twisted - well, I probably am - but I di...

2008-06-27T14:39:00.000+01:00

Maybe I'm twisted - well, I probably am - but I didn't find the Judas Cradle scene in The Mermaids Singing all that shocking. Violent and memorable, certainly, but it didn't make me too uncomfortable. Good book, though.

In crime fiction, the most horrible stuff I've read has probably been in Mo Hayder's first two books (which, again, are both superb). Birdman in particular. The entire second half of that is a lot rougher than I expected going in: very brutal and uncompromising, and parts of it are genuinely quite upsetting to read.

But the whole debate is a bit of a non-starter for me, as at crime festivals it's obviously centred on the crime genre. And anyone who says "x crime novel was hideously violent" would probably shit their pants if they read some of the more hardcore horror stuff out there (Edward Lee's The Bighead, for example). Most of which, as it happens, seems to be written by blokes.

What is a conscientious moderator? Is it someone w...

2008-06-27T13:30:00.000+01:00

What is a conscientious moderator? Is it someone who goes to war but refuses to fight?

As for gruesome, well when Halfhead the novel comes out (as opposed to the blog) there are a couple of memorable scenes in there. The Rats was pretty horrible, but then I was probably about 11 when I read it, too. I suspect if I went back to it I'd find it a bit tame.

Ah those cheeky website design teams, such a shame...

2008-06-27T11:12:00.000+01:00

Ah those cheeky website design teams, such a shame you didn't have a hand in it yourself. ;D

Now, as I've not got round to my spangly copy of Flesh House yet (so many books, so little time), I can't comment on the tin bath scene, but as for everything else.

The one scene that sticks particularly in my mind is the drilling through the eyeballs & cheeks scene in Mr Kernick's The Murder Exchange, made all the more gruesome to me as I was listening to it on Audio Book at the time and those readers do a great job!

I keenly await the debate!