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
admire clumsy four nail pages writers
I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.
disgust easy far harder incredibly page reader
I think it's very easy to disgust the reader with violence on the page - that's incredibly easy - but it's far harder to make a reader care about a character.
pact pages thousand
As a writer, you're making a pact with the reader; you're saying, 'Look, I know and you know that if this book was really a murder investigation, it would be a thousand pages long and would be very dull, and you would be very unhappy with the ending.'
discovered grew
I discovered reading through libraries. I grew up in a house that wasn't brimming with books.
aware suddenly
I read 'Jaws' and 'The Godfather' back to back one summer when I was 14 and was suddenly aware of how powerful fiction could be.
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.
detectives trend tv
In the 1970s, there was a trend for all detectives on TV to have some quirk or gimmick, and this was often physical.
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.'
biography compelling elvis history love mix music peter timeless train
I'm completely absorbed by Peter Guralnick's definitive, two-part biography of Elvis Presley: 'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love.' Meticulously researched, this is a compelling mix of history, myth-busting, and, of course, some timeless music.
time
I've never read an ebook. Print every time.
fields grew life richer tapestry wild
I'm a city boy. I grew up in a big city, in Birmingham, and I want to write about a city. It's much richer tapestry for me than green fields. Fields and wild life make me feel ill. I don't like - I don't want to write about that stuff.
branch days drive fall finally gone lights obsess realised starbucks touch traffic turn whether
I do have a touch of OCD, and I used to obsess about research. But I'm better than I was. Gone are the days when I would drive to a set of traffic lights to find out if you could turn left. I finally realised it didn't matter. A book will not stand or fall on whether or not there's a branch of Starbucks in Brixton.
genre hugely
Crime is the biggest genre in libraries and in bookshops, and it is hugely varied.
fictional remains
More than 100 years after he first appeared, Holmes remains the template for the fictional detective.