Mo Better Day

Image borrowed from Bing

It’s the birthday of British crime novelist Mo Hayder, born in England in 1962, who writes about Detective Inspector Jack Caffrey in graphically violent, best-selling thriller novels like Birdman (1999), The Treatment (2002), Ritual (2008), Skin (2009) and Gone (2010). She said that her mother, who’s “very anti-violence”, was so shocked after reading Birdman that “she didn’t speak for a week.”

Hayder said: “In most crime novels the violent act, usually the murder, is the engine. Take that away and there is little left to drive the story along. So I do get a little cross with authors who aren’t precise about the violence they’re using to create tension because I feel they’re being dishonest with their readers. If people don’t like the blood and violence in my books, fine, they can always close the cover and put it aside and maybe read a romance instead.”

She teaches creative writing at a university in Bath, England, where she lives with her daughter and a retired police sergeant. Her new novel, Hanging Hill, is due out this April.

Posted over on the Writer's Almanac