Mark Billingham
Mark Billingham
Mark Philip David Billingham is an English novelist whose series of "Tom Thorne" crime novels are best-sellers in that particular genre. He is also a television screenwriter and has become a familiar face as an actor and comic...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 July 1961
becomes certainly reader
The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will.
life matter tall
An actor's life is all about rejection. It's you they don't want; it's you who's too tall or too short or too fat. With stand-up, it doesn't matter what you look like.
adapted good hope muppet tv
All you can hope for when you get a book adapted for TV is that you get a good actor and not some muppet off 'EastEnders.'
All writers I know are readers first and foremost, and that's why you become a writer.
looks men tend whereas women
I think women tend to write about how violence feels, whereas men tend to write about what violence looks like.
bit early fictional further love stuff tastes tom
Like my fictional protagonist Tom Thorne, I love country. My tastes go back a bit further than his do, and I still listen to stuff from the late '70s and early '80s.
If the weather is nice, I play tennis, which is pretty much the only exercise that I do. I try to do that as much as I can.
cared deal great neither
It's heretical, I know, but I've never really been able to get on with Agatha Christie. She is, of course, a giant of the genre, but I never feel that she cared a great deal about the characters. Consequently, neither do I.
best entertainment people performance possible readers trying wanting
I am trying to give the best performance possible in 400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment doesn't necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to get to the end of a book.
believe birthday both care country detective london love music north readers root screws shares writers
I believe that if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves. I have to root for a detective who screws up as much as Thorne does, who shares my birthday, my North London stomping ground, and my love of country music, both alt and cheesy.
I write slowly and get distracted a lot.
ask basically funny might school showing stories teacher
I wanted to write at school - to write funny stories which the teacher might ask me to read out to the class. It's all basically about showing off.
both delivery involve worked
Having worked as both comedian and crime writer, the one thing I know is that both involve the delivery of a performance.
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Part of the reason why Scandinavian crime has been so popular is the landscape. It is just so strong and alien. Although without taking anything away, you should probably also never discount the fact that blood does look particularly good against snow.