Posts By: Bill Crider

Getting in Touch with Touchfeather

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Jimmy Sangster was an amazing writer.  He was one of the best screenwriters for Hammer's horror movies, and he was all over U.S. TV in the '70s (check out his IMDb entry).  He also wrote novels, several of which I read and enjoyed, including two about a spy named Katy Touchfeather. When Touchfeather's boyfriend is killed, it's revealed to her by the head of a super-secret British spy agency that he was murdered.  She's offered a chance to work for the same agency, as she already has the perfect cover, as she's a stewardess ('60s parlance).  Aftr attending spy school, she'll be able to work for any airline at any time and fly over the world on assignment. The big... more

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Bill Crider on “The Black Glove”

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When we launched Brash Books, one of the smartest things we did was reach out to Bill Crider, award-winning author and one of the most knowledgeable people around about crime novels, for his "wish list" of out-of-print books we absolutely had to republish to live up to our motto ("we publish the best crime novelist in existence"). Geoffrey Miller's Edgar Award finalist The Black Glove was one of books on that list (as are many of our past and future titles). Now Bill shares why he believes The Black Glove a must-read for noir fans. Terry Traven is an L. A. private-eye, a man who chose his profession because of his admiration for the work of Hammett and Chandler, knowing all along that... more

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The Story Behind “Outrage at Blanco”

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Bill Crider reveals the story behind his novels Outrage at Blanco and Texas Vigilante Outrage at Blanco has an interesting history.  What I set out to do was to write a western novel like the kind I admired so much by people like Harry Whittington, Donald Hamilton, Clifton Adams, Marvin H. Albert, and many others who wrote what were essentially crime novels with a western setting.  The books were fast-paced fiction, lean and tough. I loved reading them, and I wanted to write something similar. When I began the book, I didn’t know that Ellie Taine was the main character.  What I had in mind was something else entirely.  By the end of the first chapter, however, Ellie had... more

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The Owl Packs a Punch

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Justice Never Sleeps by author Bob Forward

The premise is right there on the cover: "Justice Never Sleeps." The Owl is a man who can't fall asleep. Sounds a bit like the the idea Lawrence Block used in his series about Evan Tanner, but the execution is entirely different in this series of thriller books. While Block's books are breezy and funny, The Owl is deadly serious but great fun. It's also very much in the style of pulp novels about The Spider and The Shadow. The Owl "wanders the streets stalking his prey, hangs out in all-night diners, and never stays in one place long enough to cast a shadow." What the Owl does is get revenge for the people who pay for it. Two years of their salary, whatever that might be, is what he... more

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