Episode 7: Danuta Reah Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

English novelist Danuta Reah is a Forensic Linguistics lecturer specializing in the link between language disorders and criminal behavior, a creative writing instructor, the former chair of the British Crime Writers' Association, and winner of the prestigious Dagger Award. Remarkably, she cites none of these factors as being the primary influence on her writing. Rather, her understanding of un-happy endings (acquired by watching her father--a Polish soldier of Belarusian descent--live his life in exile in Britain) seems to be the primum movens of her fiction, and her appreciation for painting (acquired by watching her artist husband at work) has taught her to craft prose that is sensitive to "the spaces in between. From the confluence of these wellsprings of inspiration flows BLEAK WATER, the singular tale of the grief that seeps through lives shattered by a mad artist determined to bring Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death" into the modern world. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.