Wishing I’d release another trilogy? Great news, everyone, I have! A trilogy of guest blog posts, that is, at amazon.com’s omnivoracious, on the subjects of my inspirations for Best Served Cold. Stating one’s inspirations is a messy and difficult business, a bit like trying to talk about the events that made you what you are as a person. You always have to oversimplify and make the process seem a great deal more mechanical than it is. Often hard to really say why things turn out the way they do. Still, here they are:
Point Blank, Lee Marvin, and Revenge.
Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy.
Enjoy responsibly.
9 comments so far
Joe, thanks for sharing your sources for BSC. I am anxiously waiting for it to appear on Italian bookshelves, but I will probably cav in before that and order it from Amazon (if only the ebook version were available for purchase from here).
I already posted this on the Amazon blog, but I'm not sure you'll read comments over there: if you have not watched it already,l look for Ermanno Olmi's movie "Il mestiere delle armi" ("The profession of arms"). It's a wonderfully bleak and realistic movie about one of the last great "condottieri", Giovanni dalle Bande Nere. You will probably like it.
Oh, and you mention of Machiavelli reminded me of Pratchett's Vetinari.
Any Dumas (Monte Cristo) influence?
Ludo,
I shall seek it out forthwith…
Rob,
Little bit of Monte Cristo, I guess, though the Musketeers had a much deeper impact on me in general. Monte Cristo I found a bit bloated after the first act…
Hi Joe,
You seen the 'Not The Booker Prize' over on The Guardian website where Sam Jordison has 46 books up for voting on until 23rd August?
You're in there and you've had my vote 🙂
So, come on fans, get over and vote for him, you know his ego needs it lol!
Bob
Ah, the idea of uniting those diverse cities under a single armoured heel and forcing them all to march one way. My way.
I’m joking, of course…
No, you're not. Who are you trying to kid? We're your readers.
@Bob: Consider it done!
The first time I saw my dad after lending him BSC he shouted the name of a film in my face, something he thought was the inspiration for the breaking into the bank section. Buggered if I can remember what film it was though, except that I hadn't seen it. Might it have been Point Blank… ? I am old and my memory is rubbish these days. Have to ask him again.
Heh. Just looked it up on IMDB and the synopsis includes this line: "The violence is best served cold in this one and there will be no happy ending."
Thanks for answering, Joe. I really enjoyed Best Served Cold–well worth the wait.
It's such a huge leap in quality from The First Law, it's almost scary. Congratulations on a book well done and now I find myself checking up on renaissance Italy ..