Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like?
We moved to an old Edwardian house about six months ago and were able to dedicate one room to books, though it’s also a playroom for our little girl. My wife is a librarian, and a book fanatic, so we have a lot of books to store. The room is lined with bookcases, but there’s a giant that’s three bookcases bolted together. It takes up almost an entire wall. We also have overflow bookcases in other rooms.
What kind of books will definitely not be found in your bookcase?
When you have as many books as we do, I don’t think there’s anything you wouldn’t find. There’s everything from the highest brow literature to the trashiest pulp fiction. You’ll find Jonathan Coe alongside Jackie Collins, and Beckett next to Batman.
What author have you discovered and loved recently?
Both my wife and I have really loved Megan Abbott’s books. She shows just how high a standard crime fiction can reach. What people label as genre fiction can have as much depth and ambition as the best literary fiction. Without wishing to get into this particular debate, not all literary fiction – I’d go as far as to say very little of it, in fact – is literature, and some genre fiction is very much worthy of that description.
Where is your favourite place to read?
Our room where the bookcases are. There’s a lovely old wingback chair we got in a second hand shop, and it sits beneath a big window. I also have a turntable and records in there, so it’s lovely to sit and read with some good music.
Can books change lives? If so, which one changed yours?
Yes, I think they can. In a very practical way, On Writing by Stephen King helped to change my life. It guided me in my first steps in this career.
What’s the book you’d choose as your Desert Island read?
Either American Tabloid by James Ellroy or Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Both are epic reads with incredibly dense and complex plots. You could revisit them again and again.
What book did you give last as a present and to whom?
An anthology called Books to Die For edited by my friends John Connolly and Declan Burke. It’s a collection of 120 essays by crime novelists about the books that shaped them as writers. It’s really a wonderful collection, and the UK edition is particularly handsome. I had some of the contributing authors sign a copy that I gave to my literary agent Nat Sobel last time I visited New York.
What are you reading now?
I’m currently dipping into the original Bond novels. My UK publisher, Vintage Books, recently reissued them, and were kind enough to send me a few. Live and Let Die is next in the pile.
What are your top ten books?
Assuming I can mix fiction and non-fiction, here’s a list that will probably be different tomorrow:
- American Tabloid, James Ellroy – One of Ellroy’s most ambitious, yet most accessible books.
- Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe – A masterpiece of plotting and character building.
- Red Dragon, Thomas Harris – For my money, the best serial killer novel ever written.
- Jack’s Return Home (a.k.a. Get Carter), Ted Lewis – A brilliant revenge story from a very underrated writer.
- Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris – The last great book Harris wrote.
- Marathon Man, William Goldman – A brilliant example of a 70s thriller. Tight, tight, tight, with great twists.
- Fletch, Gregory Macdonald – Forget the film adaptation. This is great.
- The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Millar – At its heart, this is just a wonderful – if fantastical – crime novel.
- Conversations with Wilder, Cameron Crowe – A beautiful book. Insightful and revealing.
- The Beauty of the Burst, Yasuhiko Iwanade – Over 200 pages of Gibson Les Pauls made between 1958 and 1960. Yes, I’m a geek.
What’s your most treasured book on your bookcase?
Probably my own copy of Books to Die For. I brought it to the Bouchercon crime writers’ convention in Cleveland OH and had a bunch of contributors add to the signatures I’d already got in Ireland. I think I’ve got about forty signatures, including authors like Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and many more.
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Stuart Neville’s first novel, The Twelve, was one of the most critically acclaimed crime debuts of recent years. It was selected as one of the top crime novels of the year by the New York Times and it won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best thriller. His second and third novels, Collusion and most recently Stolen Souls have both been published to widespread praise, confirming his position as one of the most exciting new crime authors writing today.