A Waterstones Evening With Benjamin Stevenson – Pt 2

A little later than promised, but hey, life gets in the way. This is part 2 of the Waterstones Birmingham chat with award winning writer and comedian Ben Stevenson.  (Part 1 is here.) His current book ‘ Everybody on this train is a suspect‘ is just out in paperback, and Ben was chatting about this, and all things cosy crime.

 What’s coming next?

I have a Christmas themed book with the same detective out in October, and then a fourth novel currently in progress. But I do have a worry about how many murders an amateur detective can come across. The first book (Everyone in my family has killed someone) is currently in production for a HBO series, by the same team who produced ‘Big, Little Lies’.

How Does the Humour/reception change in Different countries?

The main difference between the UK and Australia is that there are no hardback editions in Oz, so that is quite exciting. The humour itself is very similar and travels well across the two. American’s often email me about the lack of guns in my books, whilst German readers are very specific about key details (for instance, the physics of the truck), but although I like to be accurate, I don’t think you should see where the research is when you read a book.

On Agatha Christie

I like the golden age of crime. It was the start of the 10 rules of crime detection that came from the Detectives society, and specifically Ronald Knox, I love the fact that they had a club, and I love the rules, no ghosts doing the killings, no identical twins etc.

I wanted to do a modern novel that followed the rules. I say this knowing Agatha Christie broke nearly all of them!

Sherlock Holmes

I love Sherlock Holmes. The Hound of the Baskervilles is my fave because it feels like it has to break the 10 rules. It has to be a ghost dog.

Quick fire

• Prefer to write in the morning.
• Print is first for reading for me, audio second, and E book last.
• Currently enjoying ‘All the colours of the dark’ by Chris Whittaker
• I do read the reviews, not many of the professional ones. I like the amateur ones, the three star reviews on Goodreads.
• If I wasn’t an author I would love to run a cat rescue centre, or be a professional cadaver in all my movies, no lines, just dead.
• Best name for a cat? It has to be Ernie.

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