Andrea Levy Obituary

Arguably THE chronicler of the Windrush generation Andrea Levy has died today at the age of just 62. Her death from cancer is a shame to the literary community, who were indebted to Levy for showcasing the generation of Jamaican and Caribbean citizens who uprooted themselves to move to Britain and the challenges they faced.

Her most renowned novel is probably Small Island, the story of interracial relationships and wartime hardships among the Jamaican Windrush community during the late 1940s. The novel was a bestseller, and as a result was later serialised on by the BBC.

The BBC also serialised her her novel Long Song, the only one of her books not set in post-war Britain, but instead showing the final years of slavery in Jamaica, written as a memoir by a woman who grew up on as a slave on sugar plantation.

Although these two books are renowned by readers thanks to their TV adaptations, Levy’s other novels, as well as her short stories and essays, gained her acclaim long before these two. Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin’, and her second, Never Far from Nowhere are both coming-of-age tales that showcase the difficulty of growing up in an alien country that, at the time, despised immigrants at the same time as it courted them.

Levy’s rise to prominence within the literary market was remarkable, working first as a costume designer, the co-founding a graphic design company, before realising that, although black, Caribbean writers have some prominence in other countries, in Britain their stories were not being told. Considering how entwined the UK’s history is with colonialism, immigration and racial tension, the market, even to this very day, remains predominantly white and male, and as such Levy set out to change this by making her voice heard and putting across the stories of the Windrush generation.

Her powerful, evocative and engaging work quickly gained both critical and commercial praise, with readers and reviewers alike devouring her novels. There are so many messages, from overarching themes on race and historical racial abuse through to smaller, more human touches that spark joy or sadness.

As the literary community mourns, now is the time to read or reread Andrea Levy’s work and see how important her messages are even in today’s society, where many cultures and races still face their own unique fights to be recognised and supported. These amazing books set the scene for a whole new way of thinking, and the fact that Levy will never write another makes the work she did create all the more important.

Stan Lee Obituary

Having created some of the greater characters, series and franchises in the comic book world, Stan Lee, Marvel Comics legend, died today aged 95.

The Writer, Editor and Humanitarian was declared dead today at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee’s daughter, J.C. Lee.

The news will have come as a shock to the comic book community, and indeed the wider creative world. The Creator and Publisher was renowned for revolutionising the superhero genre by giving his characters real emotions and dilemmas. He worked with some of the greatest artists of their times and supported film studios and TV producers in developing visual representations of his extraordinary creations.

These included the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Spiderman. Many of the series wove into each other, and Lee was renowned for flawlessly integrating them and keeping the stories going, to the delight of his many readers around the world.

Having been born during the great depression in 1922, Lee gained a job at 17 in a publishing house owned by his relative Martin Goodman, and began writing scripts for superhero and mystery comics. Later, when Goodman fell out with his editor in 1941, Lee, then aged just 19, was made Editor-In-Chief.

Briefly during the Second World War Lee wrote content for the army, but he remained renowned for his work creating superheroes, crusaders and coppers.

Renowned for making short cameo appearances in films featuring his characters, as well as playing a sporting role as himself in a number of shows such as The Big Bang Theory, Lee was known for his wicked sense of humour.

Passionate about the arts, the Stan Lee Foundation was founded in 2010 to focus on literacy, education, and the arts. Its stated goals include supporting programs and ideas that improve access to literacy resources, as well as promoting diversity, national literacy, culture and the arts.

Married to Joan Boocock Lee, a voice actress whom he survived by a little over a year, Lee has two daughters who will, doubtless, miss him as much as his adoring fans, who will never forget the unique niche he carved out in the superhero genre.

Ultimately, Lee’s works and ideas have resonated across the creative community, and his unique ideas and ready wit will influence many generations to come.

Peter Corris: The Godfather Of Australian Crime Fiction Is A True Loss To The Genre

It is with a heavy heart that I offer this tribute to the man often known as the ‘The Godfather of Australian Crime Fiction’, Peter Corris, who died on 30^th August.

His career in crime fiction spanned nearly 40 years, with his first novel published in 1980. He retired from writing last year due to the onset of blindness, which was developing as a result of type-1 diabetes, a condition he had suffered from for many years.

Born and educated in the Australian state of Victoria, Corris went on to attend a number of Universities, including the University of Melbourne, as well as Monash University, before he gained his PHD in History at the Australian National University. Having enjoyed careers in journalism and academia, Corris set about writing crime fiction, and quickly gained acclaim for his Cliff Hardy novels, which centered on hardboiled detective and his work as he uncovered a range of gritty and often gruesome crimes. Comparable to many of the classic hardboiled detectives, Hardy is a great example of the genre, and his books are a treat for any crime fiction fan.

Alongside his Hardy novels, Corris also wrote novels featuring characters Ray Crawly, Richard Browning and Luke Dunlop. His vast body of work remains central to the Australian crime fiction space, and his work will live on as a memory of this skilled author who could expertly craft a thrilling novel that always hooked readers from the first page to the final full stop.

Corris’s death aged 76 came on the eve of him being named as the inaugural winner of the Sydney Crime Writers Festival Danger Lifetime Achievement Award, which was recognition for his vast back catalogue including more than 100 novels. This great writer will be sadly missed, and his contribution to the Australian crime fiction genre will never be forgotten.

Colin Dexter Obituary

Norman Colin Dexter, who died at home this morning at the age of 86 according to his publishers, created an enduring legacy with his Inspector Morse novels, which have become international bestsellers and form the basis for three TV series; Inspector Morse, which was based, for the most part, on the books; Lewis, which featured the escapades of Morse’s dogged Detective Sergeant as he becomes an Inspector and takes on his own caseload; and finally Endeavour, which showcased Morse’s early life as a Police Constable.

Dexter was heavily involved in the creation of these shows, and alongside his writing and advising roles he also made a number of notable cameos in the shows in a Hitchcockian manner, inserting himself into often mundane scenes.

A classicist by nature, Dexter was born and raised in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and prior to his writing career he was a classics teacher for many years. Despite living in Oxford and working at the University in later life, as well as setting his award winning novels in the city, Dexter actually attended Christ’s College, Cambridge. After struggling with his teaching posts due to his encroaching deafness (which he later wove into the plot of the novel The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn) Dexter took up the post of senior assistant secretary at the University of Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations, a post he held for many years until retiring, by which point he was already a renowned writer.

A crossword devotee and fan of poet A. E. Houseman, Dexter was renowned for his fanatical attention to detail and dedication to the English language, and as such he created a detective who mirrored this image; Morse was a grammatical snob who regularly quoted the likes of Houseman and Larkin, as well as being a classicist himself (albeit one who never actually obtained his degree). Similar to his creator Morse could not abide social snobbery, and indeed Dexter himself, despite amassing a fortune through the sale of his novels, remained living in the same house in Oxford throughout this period of his life, and was known to live simply despite his penchant for fine alcohol and classic cars (again similar to Morse, who drove a Jaguar Mark 2).

Every aspect of his books reflected Dexter’s passions; his key protagonists, Detective Chief Inspector Morse and Detective Sergeant Lewis, were named after crossword buffs (Sir Jeremy Morse and Mrs. B Lewis respectively), and Morse’s first name was just another clue to be solved for many years, with fans initially not being told, then it emerging that it began with an E, before finally, in one fell swoop, the full name was revealed to be Endeavour, after Captain Cook’s ship, owing to the character’s parents being Quakers.

Writing at a time when novels, and Crime Fiction in particular, were comparatively staid and formulaic, Dexter both broke and embraced the mould, creating a cerebral detective who was both very much of his time and distinctly out of it. At a time when writers such as Ian Rankin were developing hard hitting, tough talking dropouts who won based on their flare for the dramatic and ability to be knocking down the right door at the right time, Dexter developed an introverted gentleman with failed ambitions and deep passions who stood out from the crowd whilst, through predicable narratives (although highly unpredictable, and often deeply confusing, plots) adhering to the Golden Age tropes which define Crime Fiction as a genre.

Alongside numerous Crime Writers’ Association awards, he also received an OBE in 2000 and was appointed an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Lincoln. All these awards paled in comparison, however, to the devotion of the legions of fans that read and admired his work, and his legacy lives on in the form of 13 full length Morse novels and a legion of short stories.

Henning Mankell: An Obituary

As a true fan of the author I like to think of as the forefather of modern Scandinavian crime fiction, I thought I would share with you the obituary for Henning Mankell which I wrote shortly after his death last year.

Mankell was a talented, effortless writer who had the extraordinary talent of writing strange, deviant thoughts that were often unthinkable to normal, sane people, in a manner which made them seem logical.

He also had an eye for setting, and his most famous creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander, was characterised as much by the Skane countryside as he was by any of the sparse and unkind adjectives Mankell used to describe him.

Like many great detective fiction writers, Mankell grew to despise his creation, but his novels of the grumpy small town detective showcased innumerable narrative skills and had a richness and a humanity about them which raised them above the cheap thrills of traditional crime writing.

The Wallander novels are often political, with Mankell adding further dimension to already vastly emotive novels by posing critical questions on international and often uncomfortable issues, such as the Russian occupation of Latvia and the underlying racism inherent in Swedish culture, which was his first topic of discussion in the deftly plotted and skilfully crafted Faceless Killers.

His other works, most notably the stunning and haunting Depths, were so utterly sumptuous and rich in their use of language, even when read in translation, that they captivated audiences around the world, with Mankell’s work more popular in some countries than the Harry Potter series.

His novels transcribed many facets of life, highlighting the richness and the diversity of existence, from the existential crisis bought on by a haunted past he depicts in the beautifully dialogued Italian Shoes to the harsh, brutal and unglamorous reality of international conspiracy that pervades through The Man From Beijing.

Aside from his literary contributions, Mankell was a humanitarian, a great believer in caring for people who inspired many others through his work in Africa as well as his writing, which often reflected the harsh struggle many have to face and encouraged compassion and kindness. He fought tirelessly, even following his cancer diagnosis in 2014, which he chronicled in blog posts and essays on the process of cancer treatment and the mental and physical struggle he experienced.